EBF to bottle… advice

[rcr11123]

My daughter is 4 & a half months and exclusively breastfed. I will have to start leaving her for the day with my mum (occasionally) so she will need to take a bottle but at the moment when my mum tries her she takes a few gulps and gets upset. She is probably taking around half an oz.

Any tips on getting her used to the bottle? I have around a month or so to get her familiar before I have to leave her.

I found it helpful to get her dad to do some regular feeds. I'd leave the room (or the home) at a normal feeding time. She took the bottle from him when she was hungry and it became normal.

She never took a bottle from me, I guess she knew I had the breast milk.

So there’s a couple of things I did with my daughter to get her used to the bottle

i made sure the milk was really warm. And the teet on the bottle warm too. I would start the feed on the breast to quench her immediate thirst then slide the bottle in. Another thing was to stand up and bounce her a little as that helped her get a rhythm to her suck.
and I give her a bottle every 2 days so it stays familiar. It’s annoying as I hate pumping but it keeps her familiar!

the milk and teet temperature are key for my daughter. She will not take room temp or cold milk

If she refuses the bottle completely (mine did), try a cup.

No tips as such I’m afraid. It took around 3 weeks for us to reach the point where DC would happily take a bottle and drink the full amount (they started by taking none at all, then maybe half an ounce and then jumped to drinking the full amount once used to it). I was almost at breaking point and suddenly something changed and they just took it. I spoke to a midwife who advised me to ‘gently persevere’ which at the time I thought was really unhelpful but in the end is what worked.

Use the slowest possible teat. Most end babies are used to getting only a small amount before let down - she may be surprised and put off by how much she is getting from the first few sucks.

The teat is quite important, try lansinoh, it's the only one any of me or my friends bf babies took to.