Introducing bottle/cup to 7 month old baby - any success stories?

[girlfrombackthen]

I have a 7.5 month old DC who has been breastfed since birth... Never tried her with a bottle in the first few months as breastfeeding was straightforward and had no reason to be away from her for any length of time.

Fast forward to now and I have a few overnight stays planned away from DC in the next couple of weeks/months (weddings and parties)... Over the last few weeks we have tried to introduce expressed milk via a bottle/ sippy cup and she hasn't really got the hang of either.

She is doing really well with solids and is eating a reasonable amount 3 times a day but I would love her to have a bottle now so that I know she would be well fed while I am away! I know she would survive without me for 24/36 hours and would likely compensate with solids/take some milk eventually... DP is very capable but simply doesn't have boobs and obviously I don't want her to be extremely hungry and distressed!

Any tips or success stories about introducing a bottle or leaving an EBF baby at this stage?

Or should I just face the fact that I shouldn't be leaving her at this stage and cancel plans :(

I think she's old enough to be without you for a couple of days. And this comes from someone who only does that for medical reasons but if you need, you need. She's eating, you can express, you can get little bottles of milk from the supermarket just in case as well that's what we did when I had surgery.

I remember reading somewhere that some people have to simmer the breastmilk before storing. Maybe you can read about it

Build up to it? Go out for an evening locally leaving DH to do bedtime with the bottle. He’s more likely to have success if you’re not hanging around with your boobs. If she’s really not having any of it then you can come home and feed after a few hours. But hopefully it will be a success and then you can leave him and the bottle to do the bedtime routine a couple of nights awake and then you can be confident about the overnights.

You could also add your breastmilk to food, e.g add it to porridge in the morning. That way getting nutrients and fluid.