Babble

Jillian is almost five months old and I am nursing her exclusively.  While I very much enjoy breastfeeding and love how convenient and free it is, I would also like to leave the house on occasion and not have to hurry home three hours later.

However, Jillian refuses the bottle.  Stridently.  She hates it. 

The other part of this problem is that my husband would like to be able to give her a bottle from time to time and be involved with her feeding and also help me get out of the house, but she fights him and screams and screams and screams and all it does is frustrate both of them.  She gets all upset and screamy and sweaty and my husband gets all frustrated and mad at himself and at the baby.

Is there anything I can do to help this process?  We have tried every kind of bottle/nipple combo.  I have tried leaving the room.  I have tried leaving the house.  We have let her scream for an hour or so until she gets so hungry she has no other option but to take the bottle.  By then, however, everyone is pissed off and sad.  Help!

We had a similar experience, but we learned that we had to muscle through it (even had a few major crying/screaming tantrums.) Granted we started the "Daddy bottle" a little earlier than you did, we started around 3 months. But initially, my husband also had the same response from our son. I stayed in the bed and let them work it out (even though I was dying to intervene and calm everyone down.) Eventually, they reached a mutually acceptable feeding routine -- my husband got the satisfaction of being able to soothe our child and our son learned that someone other than Mommy could feed and comfort him. Good luck. I'm sure after a bit of a rough patch things will be smooth sailing.

We never tried the bottle thing, but if you plan on giving her solids and water from a sippy cup soon, maybe she'd go for that. I know that wouldn't give you immediate freedom, but it might work if you give it a bit of time until she takes enough to replace a meal or at least tide her over until you come back (if you plan on introducing solids at 6 months, that is).

 

This can be so frustrating.  My 6.5 month old son refused the bottle for about 3 months.  He will now occasionally take it from my mom or my husband when I am at work.  For the first two months I was at work they had to feed him with a medicine dropper or the plunger that comes with baby Motrin.  It is fairly labor-intensive, but works in a pinch.  Now he is starting to eat solids, and this phase, like most of them, will soon pass.  We hope. 

I had the exact same problem with both of my daughters at that same age.  Both times I was frustrated and felt it would never get any better and somehow it did.  My first basically had to get hungry enough to take one with my mom because I worked 2 days per week.  I was so heartbroken inside-because I had tried so hard to get her to take the bottle at home-bought every single bottle etc. etc.  All I can say is that she must have been hungry enough to finally take it and I was consistent about giving her a bottle or 2 every day.  With my second I was home full-time and had no one to help.  I tried everything-finally I just started giving her bottles with a small amount of formula in them all the time, like they were play toys. As she began to be able to pick things up she was interested in them.  I put her in her bouncer sometimes and just gave it to her to hold and thought in my mind "no pressure"  Everywhere she went, there was a bottle near her.  Another thing I think helped was starting solids, I gave both girls food around 5 months.  It was different and I think it opened them up to different ways of obtaining food.  If you are consistant in offering the bottle- I think the problem will slowly pass, at least it did for me. One more thing- if you are planning on formula someone told me GoodStart (the regular kind w/oDHA) is somewhat sweeter or more like breastmilk...it is probably not true but it does smell a bit better than other brands and both girls took to it easy once they got the hang of the bottle. good luck!

An update!

I think my husband's erratic schedule over the past few weeks is part of the problem with the bottle concept.  When we first tried it, she was more receptive, but then the schedule went haywire and we stopped offering it for awhile.  Fast-forward a few weeks and here we are. 

Yesterday was hellish.  Jillian gave up and decided to just scream and Daddy gave up as well and handed her over to me.  It didn't help matters much when she quit screaming as soon as I picked her up AND THEN she finished the bottle that Daddy had been struggling with for the past hour.  Sigh.

Same thing today, except she was so pissed off at both of us, she figured out how to scream with her thumb in her mouth and wouldn't even look at the bottle until about four hours had passed since her last feeding and she was hungry.  Then, VOILA!  She sucked that thing down like it was going out of style.  I think that's progress.

I have been doing what Stacy has done, and that is making sure she has a bottle around all the time to "play" with and get used to.  It's helping, I think.

Sounds like everything is going to turn out just fine!

Good job!  I was going to suggest just giving up on the bottle since your baby probably will be eating food in a couple months (if not already), though some people like to wait on introducing solids...   My first baby wouldn't really take a bottle either, at leat not reliably, which put a damper on any ideas of mine to get out when the baby was awake.   But it sounds like you have made a lot of progress!  Aren't those moments gratifying? 

I had the same problem. What worked for me when wanting to feed pumped milk: try putting her down on a comforting surface, like a lambskin and then try it, so she isn't confused by the breastfeeding cradle hold. The Avent bottles seem to work best. Also there is a bottle in the shape and feel of a breast from One Step Ahead.

If I were in the same position I would master NIP and unfortunately leave Papa out of the feeding equation for a bit....Since Jillian will be of age shortly to try solids and that could be Papas fun feeding role.....mashed yams! :)

funny you say that cause my husband can not give a bottle for the life of him now she is 5 months old, im terrified she wont take it with anyone else either. im going to cry!

Don't cry!!!!  There is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Try giving her a sippy cup.