Exclusive breastfed baby to bottle feed mom going back to work

My friends baby is 6 weeks and has been exclusvively breastfeeding him the whole time. SHe is going back to work in 4 weeks and have been slowly trying to introduce a bottle so when she goes back to work. (A PUMPED BOTTLE OF BREAST MILK) but he wont take it at all. He took a bottle a couple times between 2 and 4 weeks but now wont take it at all and she doesnt know what to do.

I exclusviley pumped for a year so I dont have any advice for her, can someone please help Thank youuuu

 

Here are some articles with tips to try:

http://www.motherandchildhealth.com/Breastfeeding/Becky/breastfed_bottle.html

http://www.mother-2-mother.com/

http://www.leron-line.com/handouts/Helping_a_Breastfed_Baby_Accept_a_Bottle.pdf

I think the most important thing though is just to keep trying till she finds what works for her baby. Good luck!

 

Excellent articles. Every baby is different so there is a lot of trial and error. My twins went easily between breast and bottle but my 7 month old had some initial issues. I found that she took it from my DH much better than she took it from me in the early days of practicing. I also found that trying different bottles until you find what baby likes can help. We ended up with the Dr. Browns bottle. The nipple shape is such that baby can pull the entire nipple into her mouth instead of just the tip, which mimics the action of nursing.

The other thing that I didn't see in these articles was that many breastfed babies will do better if more upright rather than reclined with bottle held parallel to the ground. This allows the baby to control the flow, much like in nursing, instead of the flow being controlled by gravity. An additional site that helps with all sorts of nursing questions is www.kellymom.com

Worst case scenario is baby will do something called reverse cycling where he doesn't eat much during the day and nurses from her at night. I promise you he won't starve! Going back to work is HARD! I promise he will learn to adapt, so encourage her to not stress and enjoy her last month home with her baby.

 

I was lucky with my son, I didn't have to go back to work until he was 7 months old. But he never took a bottle well. We coslept and he did reverse cycle. Kellymom also has a good article that explains reverse cycling well. She should read that along with the articles of getting the baby to take a bottle.

Also 10 weeks is really early to try a sippy, but if she does, I suggest starting with a valve-less sippy and someone helping the baby tip the cup up and down to take sips. I found that my son, who wouldn't take a bottle, also wouldn't take the kind of sippy you have to suck the milk out of.

 

2 things:

1: Try having someone other than Mama give baby the bottle. I was never able to easily give my daughter a bottle. She knew how she wanted things when Mama was around.

2: Try different bottles/nipples. My daughter was picky and would pretty much only take the ones that came with the pump.

 

I agree that she is just going to have to experiment until she finds what works. Every now and then DH and I take our older boys out while someone watches our breastfed baby. The sitter has had a very difficult time with the bottled breast milk the last few times. LO eventually takes some, but not much, and it takes forever. I have tried both the Avent and Dr. Brown bottles (level 1 nipples) and he is not a fan. I finally went back to the Medela 5-oz bottles (the ones you pump into) with a disposable Enfamil infant nipple (that they give in hospitals) and he took that pretty well. I believe it is a slower flow than the other level 1 nipples and for whatever reason, the feel and/or the flow is more acceptable to him. So, I'll be ordering more.

I also love this advice. It had not occurred to me.

Good luck. It may take some trial and error, but she'll get there.