Hi
I have an 8 month old daughter who went off the bottle at 4 months, I've fed her by breast ever since.

I need to go back to work full time in 3 months and want to start weaning her now. Every time I try the bottle (Avent/Tommie Tippie/Nuk) she refuses it and gets quite upset. I then give in and offer her the breast.

The main issue I have is that she uses the breast to calm herself down and wind down ready for sleep. I don't know how she can do this with the bottle.

Does anyone have any helpful suggestions for me on gradual weaning and how to give baby the same or similar comfort as the breast before going to sleep? Thank you

I know you want to wean her off 100% but some of the mums in my mums group are having the same trouble so they are giving her breast first thing in the morning and breast before bed (to get them to sleep) and bottles during the day.

I didnt ask how they went with giving bottles during the day though.

I would try giving her a bottle of water with every meal she is having just until she gets used to it and then in a couple of weeks start substituting one feed with a bottle and then gradually increase. When she starts having her bottle make sure it is the same feed(best to be a day feed at first) and make sure you are consistent with her. Hope this makes sense and helps a bit. Good luck.

Hi

my baby girl refused the bottle as well and i am still having some trouble with her drinking it from other people. I tried all of those bottles as well and found the pigeon one was the best. She took to that one straight away as the teats are really soft. O could only find them at terry whites chemist.

DS refused the bottle so we just went straight to cup....he was about 6months.
but I agree with PP you could still do morning and night feeds if its for the comfort.

Glad I found this post. I am also trying to get bub to take a bottle it's proving to be a struggle. I go back to work in two and a half months so she will be going into daycare and will need to be on the bottle. She just screams and wont even try it, i eventually give in and give her the breast. I am in the process of trying different bottles so it's only early days. I was wondering how many times a day should I be trying? At the moment it's just once a day, generally in the morning. Any advice would be appreciated.

we did it once a day and not a major feed so DS wasn't grumpy or too tired.
I think it was his 2pm feed to begin with

How long did you try with each bottle before trying another? I was thinking about trying it for a week to see if she takes to it.

I think we might of done a couple of weeks on each bottle, and also tried the milk at different temps to see if that made a difference....it did, had to be room temp.

Thanks for your advice nadz27, we will try for a week or so with each bottle and see how we go with each bottle. Fingers crossed.

My friend and i had this same prob.
i was using the wrong size/flow teats. i put a bigger 3 month old + teat and he greddily took it. at 2 months old.
Friend also tried this with her 7 month old after trying 5 different types of bottles and realising she still has newborn flowing teats on all of them!!!
So check what flow size your using cos sometimes its that simple:)

Hi everyone, thank you very much for your responses. I ended up getting a Karatane nurse in to support me and I'm very pleased to say that in less than a week, my daughter now takes the bottle! As my daughter is 9 months, she is eating a fair amount of solids at dinner time. The first night, I spent 40 minutes in the bedroom trying to get her to take the bottle, with no luck, and she fell asleep exhausted. However, it got easier from there and the second night she took 50ml from the bottle (Avent) in her high chair.

Tonight she took 100ml of expressed milk straight after her bath while lying on her change mat. It really was just a matter of continuing to offer the bottle with each feed and not offering the breast straight away if it didn't work.