My 8 week old daughter WILL NOT take a bottle. She has been exclusively breast fed except for 2 times in the first 2 weeks where she did take a bottle. At the time, I thought, "Great, I know she'll take one" and never tried again until last week. She absolutely refuses. I started with the Born Free bottle and my dr. suggested the Playtex drop ins. Both are no gos. Any suggestions? Anyone try the Adiri bottle? I really need to get this down, I have a few events I need to go to on a few weeks! Thank you for all your great advice!
Thanks to all for your advice. At 16 weeks now, my daughter still will not take a bottle. So I've decided to go straight to sippy cups. We've had some success. Still not an entire feeding, but we're working on it. Guess Mexico will have to wait!
I had no trouble with Advent bottles....I used stored breastmilk in them. The larger nipple seemed to help.
You have to leave the house. She can smell your milk and knows you are still there (even if you leave the room).
My mom wanted to keep my son overnight when he was 2.5 months old and I had a very hard time with it - as he refused to take a bottle from my husband or me. She said not to worry, she took him and he refused so he fell asleep without having anything. By 11pm, he woke up, she offered the bottle and he drank the whole thing. The next morning, he took it w/o any problems.
When he came home, he refused to take it from me, but if I left the house, my husband was able to give it to him.
It took about a week before he was willing to take it from me. By then, he was okay with just taking the bottle - as long as he got fed, he was happy.
Also, I knew so many people who kept switching bottles - thinking it was the bottle. I refused to do so. He only got one choice and it's the bottle I had. Oh yeah, it was a Dr. Brown's - wide nipple - which, is suppose to be the next best thing to "the breast". So, just make sure you have a bottle that for nursing babies, otherwise she may have difficulty drinking properly.
Good luck.
~C.
keep trying every day a few times. Try when she is half asleep for best success. Also you may have to face her away from you when you feed her, so she can't see you. You may have to keep trying various bottles too. If she takes a pacifier try to get the similar material (silicone or rubber) and shape for the bottle nipple. Anytime you have people visit ask them to try the bottle.
Sometimes it's no particular bottle that breaks them out of their refusal but it doesn't hurt to try a few. The best thing we heard was to try distracting her while giving her the bottle. According to my lactation consultant, it doesn't really matter if you or someone else is the one giving the bottle. Of course she's probably going to like the breast the best.
My daughter refused for a while or would "hold out" until I got home. It sounds crazy, but she really like the sound of the blow drier and would calm down long enough to start the bottle. My MIL would also cross her legs and put my daughter in the crook of her leg so she could face her and talk to her while she took the bottle. These distraction techniques seemed to do the trick and within a week or so she was taking it without any fuss.
Good luck!
