Best bottle to introduce to five month old breastfed baby?

[2022FTM]

Hi All,

I have been exclusively breastfeeding my daughter for the last five months. It has not been an easy journey - due to nipple pain, a shallow latch and late diagnosis of a tongue tie.

I'm now ready to stop breastfeeding, however baby isn't so keen. So far I've tried MAM bottles with frozen breastmilk, freshly expressed milk, formula, me out of the house, in another room, husband giving the feed etc. But still no luck getting baby to accept it!

I'm reluctant to spend a fortune on various different bottles/teats - so wondered what bottles people have had success with when introducing bottle feeding to a slightly older baby? Any other hints/tips are also welcome!

We had a similar situation with our DD1, we tried a few bottles and the one that worked for us was Dr Browns - they are designed to help with colic I think and even though DD1 didn;'t have colic, this was the bottle she decided to accept. Good luck, you'll get there!

I'm on my second and am using the Philips Avent bottles again. No issues feeding expressed breastmilk to either of them. I've given them a bottle or two weekly since 8 weeks so they don't go off it.

I could never get mine to take a bottle. I would recommend you don't use it and go straight to a cup. With the appropriate lid there's not quite so much wastage mess

Hi, I started on a bottle a lot earlier at just over a week as we had weight loss and struggled breastfeeding however The feeding team at the hospital recommended NUK bottles because of the teats as I still wanted to try breastfeeding some of the time and they said these were similar, I had some tommee tippee ones already and I could see the difference, tommee tippee ones were more rigid. Do you have a local Facebook group for your town, you could ask if anyone has bottles you could try out before you buy them new...

Oh and mine will take the bottle and still breastfeed so he hasn't gone off breastfeeding due to the bottle so in my mind they are quite close to being similar and he is 6 weeks now.

5 months of struggling is seriously impressive! Just move to weaning and a cup, food replaces the need for milk. But trying to bottle feed now can't replace you, you've done too much of a good job. You should be very proud of yourself

Mine refused bottles, I got one to eventually drink breast milk and then milk from a lidded cup about 7months. The other would only drink breast or water from cup until 2yrs.

I later found out that it's suggested you introduce baby to bottles a lot earlier on, regularly if you want to stop/get a break.