A customer recently wrote an email, as she needed to get her
baby to drink expressed breast milk from a bottle, but was having
trouble.
She wrote "I have been breast feeding my almost 2 month old
daughter. My husband tried feeding her my breast fed pumped milk
from a bottle a couple of weeks ago and she seemed to have no
problem with it. However, when he tried again today, our daughter
couldn't / didn't drink from it. Tonight she was crying for over
half an hour when he tried and finally I breastfed her. I'm going
back to work from Monday for 2 months so she really needs to master
bottle feeding before then. Do you have any tips which might help
us out?"
The question that she asked is really common actually,
particularly when babies get to the 2 or 3 month age, they work out
that something is going on.
We suggest is that you try introducing a bottle at
non-feeding times. Put a little
boiled-cooled water in it, and just let her become familiar with
the bottle and teat. Its less stressful doing it with water
(and not your precious expressed milk which could go to waste!),
and its less stressful than doing it at a meal time. Then try
with a little bit of milk, not a whole bottle.
Try giving your partner a piece of your clothing that has your
smell on it, and put it close to baby too while holding the
bottle.
Another thing that you could try it to get her latched and
breastfeeding, then after about 3 minutes dettached her and quickly
put the bottle in her mouth.
UPDATE: have received an email back from the customer, and she
says
"Great news, my daughter is now a pro at drinking from a
bottle!! Your tips helped greatly! At first, when my husband
tried it was just hopeless! He tried on numerous occassions with me
out of the room, wearing my clothes, and all sorts and it kept
ending in tears and our daughter being too upset to even realise a
teat was in her mouth. The idea of not trying when it
was her meal time was invaluable. She was always too hungry when we
had tried before which got us nowhere. We were going on the theory
that she would be really hungry so would take anything. Definitely
not an accurate one! So thank you once more again for your
help!"
Andrea.