Bottle fear - am I being silly?

[laural87]

Hi all

My daughter is 14 weeks old. I'm lucky enough to say that breastfeeding is going well and because of knowing just how lucky I am with that, I'm frightened to give a bottle incase it ruins the breastfeeding.

I wouldnt need give expressed milk often - we have a wedding in November and by that point she will be 6 months and weaning. I guess it's also the case of date nights with hubby etc too - that freedom to leave her with someone else if we needed to.

What should I do?

My HV said i might never have to give a bottle because by the wedding we could try her with one of these 360 cups.

Why do you all think? Anyone else felt like this? Or can I reassurance a bottle wouldn't put her off breastfeeding.

Thank you xx

I parallel fed fine with both my kids from about 2 months. No issue. Think it depends on the child, but giving bottle once and child refusing breast sounds unlikely to me.

Give a bottle! My first refused a bottle and was much younger than14 weeks when introduced.
It won’t ruin feeding as long as you pump.

I had my sisters wedding and we had To spend weeks persevering with the bottle in order to get her to drink. It was v stressful.

Yes, she will have a cup, but may not be sufficient in drinking from it at that stage. It also worries me that she was only drinking smaller amounts.

It’s not the end of the world but if you want a bit of free time, I’d introduce one. Also give at varying times of days so she doesn’t become Accustomed to it.

At 6 months use a cup. (Just a general basic beaker.)

After 14 weeks, breastfeeding is very much established and the chances of preferring a bottle are low. I think you're more likely to have the opposite with baby refusing! By 6 months, baby would be able to cope without milk, however might not want to... if you see what I mean.

I would give a bottle a try, I don't think you have anything to lose.

Ime although lots of babies can drink from cups from around 6 months they tend to only drink tiny amounts from a cup. That has been our experience with DD and the same for all our family and friends with their kids.

I would go for it and introduce a bottle but do it very rarely so as not to interrupt with BF. We introduced a bottle at 2 weeks and she had about 2 a week until we stepped it up after she was 6 weeks and gradually weaned her onto formula over the 4 weeks or so. She did eventually get bottle preference which cut my BF journey short but only by a couple of weeks as was already weaning her on to formula as had too many problems breastfeeding and hated it. She only started not wanting to BF when she was having like more bottles than BFs so like 60% bottles and 40% breastfeeds for a week or so, then she started refusing the breast and getting very upset and only wanting a bottle. But all the way up until that point she had been fine, so I think if you only do it occasionally it would be fine. My DM combi-fed all 3 of us right from birth and had no problems with bottle preference in any of us though.

I do always see online about people not introducing a bottle until a few months in and their babies refusing to take one and finding it v stressful etc.

We had a spouted cup that dd accepted from 4 months, she refused bottles

Thank you all!

I'd just do it. After 2 bottle refusing children I'd LOVE it if I could give them a bottle and have that flexibility.