Alternative to a bottle

[MeredithK]

My DS is 14 weeks and we exclusively breastfeed. I've been trying for weeks to get him to take a bottle for the few occasions I'm not available. He just doesn't get the whole sucking thing. Doesn't suck the pacifier either. I've tried the Avent bottle, Adiri, Nuby, and Breastflow bottles.

He does seem to respond when you squirt milk in his mouth...he keeps his mouth open waiting. But it takes good aim to not get him to choke! He also loves lapping up his Camilia homeopathy out of the little tube it comes in.

Any ideas of what might work for him?

Oh - taking the bottle from DH when I'm not here is worse then when I try it myself! We've tried.

[boobs4milk]

have you tried cup feeding? here's a video:

http://www.nbci.ca/index.php?option=...lips&Itemid=13

natalie would not take a bottle and didn't do a sippy cup until she was almost a year, so we cup fed her on occasion.

[texmati]

Sorry to hear that you are having trouble. You might also try feeding with a spoon or dropper. It just takes patience, so I'd start before he gets hungry Also, once when we were stuck, stuck, stuck in the worst traffic jam I've been in in years, I've taken an ice cold bottle of milk, and just let the bottle drop into his mouth. I think it was just the novelty of cold milk that made ds keep at it.

Medela has a haberman feeder, that basically you can use to squirt milk out if you need to, and also a spoon feeder that fit on to standard bottles.

Finally-- I didn't realize that having the lid of the bottle on too tight makes the flow much faster. A looser fit might make a slower flow.

[sahmmie]

Spoon feeding works amazingly well if baby is hungry and willing. I spoon fed my son ebm for months due to reflux and a feeding aversion. If you want to try it prop him up in a bouncy chair, have a towel handy because it's messy until you get the hang of it. I used a plastic picnic type of spoon because babies tend to not like metal spoons and the little baby spoons are too small. I used to fill the spoon 1/2 way and touch it to his lips. He'd slurp it up and swallow it if he was hungry and he became quite adept with it. It's time consuming but my son would take 3 ounces per feeding and it was well worth the time and effort.

Good luck.

[kriket]

try cheaper bottles I thought DS couldn't bottle feed then we tried a cheap old gerber and it worked great.

[texmati]

Originally Posted by kriket

try cheaper bottles I thought DS couldn't bottle feed then we tried a cheap old gerber and it worked great.

I had the same experience. This weekend I went out and bought evenflo purely comfi nipples in 0-3 months. They are much slower than the medela ones, and also fit on standard sized bottles.