nipple confusion

[suzi2]

has anyone actually had 'nipple confusion' happen to their baby due to mixing breast/bottle/dummy? the midwives keep telling me that a dummy/occasional bottle is a no-no but most people i know have not had a problem. My DS is 11 days old and understands breastfeeding well... we introduced a dummy last night (he has awful colic and is 'farty' - 11pm - 5am each night) and plan to try an expressed bottle today. but am just a bit worried it may cause the confusion...

i had no problem at all.
ds was bottle fed at birth and had a dummy from 2 days.
we finally cracked breastfeeding when he was about 10 days old and we easily swapped between breast and bottle and used dummy.

HOWEVER... at arounf 3/4 months i started giving him a bottle while i cleared up a nasty bout of thrush and he refused breast completely afterwards... has been bottle fed ever since.

Hi Suzi. I had no problem with 'confusion' - babies that small don't really have the ability to be confused - it is really a misnomer. Older babies may have a preference, but that seems to be different. My dd was bottlefed EBM from birth, because it took her a long time to learn to breastfeed. She took her first breastfeed at 4 weeks and from 7 and a half weeks has been breastfed apart from her 11pm bottle of EBM (she hadn't actually woken for this feed for weeks before she started to breastfeed properly, and got used to being so deeply asleep at 11pm - she could rouse just enough to take a bottle but waking her enough to take a good breastfeed made her really upset, so we have left that). Last weekend I went out for the day and my Mum gave her bottles of EBM - I was really worried that she wouldn't feed from me after that, but she was fine. She is 10 weeks old now.

The advice I received with regard to bottlefeeding was to make sure that the teat wasn't too fast a flow, and to tilt the teat up to the roof of dd's mouth, so that the jet will go to the same place as if you were breastfeeding.

Hope this helps.

Yes, I know one baby who wouldn't latch at the breast at all, after being given a couple of bottles in hospital

Thanks all. My mum gave him a bottle of EBM last night and he wolfed it down (andwanted more - I thought almost 2 oz would be fine for an 11day old!). He also gave us a break by sleeping for 3 hours twice during the night - a first - he usually feeds/cries from 11pm - 5am. Not sure if it's coincedence but we'll be trying again tonight. No confusion so far... (fingers crossed!)