Leaving baby over night and BF

[buckyou]

My baby is 10 weeks. In June (so he will be coming up to 4 months) we've organised a night out in London and a work offsite that both involve an over night stay (I'm not back at work yet but they want me to go to this do).

Baby is EBF and not really that great at taking a bottle, although will if you persevere.

I'm not really sure if I want to leave him or if it's fair when he doesn't take a bottle very well. What can I do to get him taking a bottle better? If I give him a bottle daily, what's the best time of day?

Should I just cancel and wait til he's a bit older?

Personally I would have found that stressful, as DD didn't want a bottle, she was relying on feeds to get back to sleep and I never got on with pumping so would have been hugely uncomfortable and I would have worried about impact on supply. If I needed to go I think I would have had to get someone to come too and stay in the hotel room with DD.

If this is important to you, then you can focus on building up bottle feeding or possibly even cup feeding later on. Good luck and I hope you get some tips on bottle refusing soon. I never had the energy to persevere and waited it out!

Personally I think 10 weeks is too young to leave a newborn and might impact on supply.

What do you want to do? I ended up ff by I would say only now at nearly 1 am I ready to leave my DD for one night.

Baby would be ok - they won't starve, but if it was my DD at that age they would have been very unsettled, kept the whole bloody house awake all night and I would have very uncomfortably full.

Personally, I wouldn't go but that's just me. If you want to go then really you need to get your baby taking a bottle consistently, particularly at bedtime. Daytime is easier as whoever is looking after her can distract with other stuff.

I wasn't really planning to breast feed long term and organised it when DH was saying it would be nice to have some time to ourselves (got a nearly 2yo as well).. and when june seemed a long way away!

He will be 16 weeks when I leave him.

No way would I go to this. It could all be fine, but you're not under any obligation to attend while you're on mat leave, baby may well be very unsettled (4 month sleep regression likely to make them more so) and you will be very uncomfortable unless you express regularly.

Ok, I think I will cancel.

I'd go but I'm a sleep deprived mum of an 8 wk old and toddler who is craving a night away! DS (now 2.5) wouldn't comfortably take a bottle until he was 12 weeks but we started st 6 weeks. He would scream and fuss but we persisted. Tried every bottle. Eventually I got him on the bottle during the day as he was just too grumpy in the evenings for DH to do it.
DD is 8 weeks and we started trying the bottle this week. Hurrah she took to it instantly. But she's full of colic so I can't leave her in the evenings until that's improved. I'm making sure she gets a bottle daily but just at whatever time of day my boobs feel able to miss a feed. I don't want to pump milk as I did that with DS and found the whole bf, pumping, bottle thing too stressful and I don't have the time now. Ultimately it may impact my supply but I'm not planning on bf much beyond 5/6 months anyway.

I did this at 16 weeks. It was fine. Have you had other people taking a bottle? DS wouldn't take a bottle from me but would from someone else (if I wasn't in the room). I was only out for about 6 hours though and my boobs were like concrete when I got home. You're going to have to do a lot of pumping if you're going to be gone much longer

I've cancelled. Lots of time for nights out when he's a bit older. more stressful than it's worth I think!

I couldn't have done this at 4 months. My DC is 11 months now and I left them at 8 months from morning until midnight. They were fine with the bottle ( also on solids at that point) but my boobs were absolute agony by the time I got home.