which approach for dd who won't take bottle? introduce slowly slowly or big bang approach?

[mammaemma]

DD is 13 weeks old and has been exclusively breastfed. She was taking the odd bottle from 2 weeks old of expressed milk. Always took it fine until three weeks ago and now she gets most upset or just plays with the teat in her mouth. She won't take a decent feed, sometimes she takes the odd ounze here all there.

i am stumped as to what to do? do i keep trying with one bottle a day until she takes it willingly or do i just wake up one day and say thats it, its bottles today and nothing else and just prepare myself for the hunger strike (last week she went six hours with nothing) Any advice would help me loads as this is really stressing me out !!

Thanks mums.

[Judessis]

What a mare - my sister and a close friend had this problem, my sister took the gentle approach with keeping offering until he finally took the botle (which co-incided with weaning so took a while), my friend tried every bottle on the market, and found that her sone would only drink from the Mam bottles as the teat is dimpled and flat rather than being round so its more like a nipple. May also be worth running the teat under boiling water to warn up as nipples are nice and warm (but please please please test this first on yourself as I haven't tried this myself and I don't want your DD to get burnt!). Good luck

[mummymic]

hi - i had a similar problem with my daughter - it took me 3 months to get her to drink out of a bottle! i tried all bottles and teats, but nothing - eventually i kept offering her a small bottle with a little bit in several times a day, this seemed to work better than anything else i had tried - good luck
i now have the opposite with my son - i tried him sooner with a bottle and persevered for a few days so he took it, and now he doesnt want to breast feed!!!!!!!!!

[ProfYaffle]

My dd was like this and, like Judessis sister, we only had success when dd was weaning. I also tried every bottle on the market, tried warming the teat, getting dh to do it etc etc I was going back to work and getting desperate, my (sensible) HV advised bf as if I was already at work (ie, one feed at 7am, one at 7pm) and offer only formula inbetween.

DD was 7 mo at this point and weaning was well established so I could give her yoghurts etc to make up the amount of milk in her diet.

She eventually started drinking formula from a cup after about a week of this so she never had bottles. tbh I think it only worked because weaning was established and she was getting used to new tastes and textures as well as accepting food from something other than the breast.

I was always reluctant to do the full on hunger strike approach. Maybe you could try speaking to your hv for advice?

[mears]

I would not do big bang approach as all babies will take milk from a bottle or cup eventually. Why not leave it for a few days then try later? It also doesn't matter whether she takes a full feed or not. All my babies got given a bottle shortly before I went back to work with no problem at all - having a bottle a day doesn't necessarily have to be essential.
Are you going back to work soon?