Ask Aunty Lactivist – Baby won’t take EBM in bottle

4 comments to Ask Aunty Lactivist – Baby won’t take EBM in bottle

• Lucy

  June 1, 2011 at 3:20 pm · Reply

  Hello

  I have had a go at giving my baby boy ebm in a bottle (he was having a growth spurt and had been feeding for 6 hours practically non-stop, there was just nothing left in the breats – thank heavens for the freezer!). He wasn’t keen at first, kept gagging and seeming to choke on the teat as it is a different shape and of course much less soft and malleable than a breast (I also have tommee tippee no. 1), but I found two things helped: I let Daddy feed him (no chance of getting a breast there, made him try harder with the bottle!) and I sat him up a bit more than usual, so that he was at maybe 45 degrees, not laying on his back. I think sometimes it’s the milk hitting the back of their throat they don’t like, and if you think about it, to breastfeed they are on their side, not their back, so they don’t get that ‘drowning’ feeling.
  Hope this helps! Hang in there, I know it’s really hard and frustrating, but you’re giving her the very best food in the world!

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• Dr Sarah

  June 1, 2011 at 10:56 pm · Reply

  I had exactly the same problem, and it was really difficult as I had to go back to work when my baby was almost four months! On the first day I was away, my husband actually spent ages spooning milk into her mouth with a dropper as he was so worried about her dehydrating, but within a few days she had accepted that I just wasn’t going to be around during the day and she was going to have to take a bottle. She still wouldn’t take one when I was around (not even from my husband), but she accepted one when I wasn’t there. Of course, I was gone for such a long time (11 hours or more) that she didn’t have a lot of choice.

  One interesting thing is that she never seemed happy to take the EBM in bottles, even once she did accept it – but, a few months later, we tried her with some formula and she seemed MUCH happier to take that. We theorised that having the EBM just made her more upset by reminding her of me, but I suppose it’s anyone’s guess what the reason was. Anyway, after that we gave her formula while I was gone and I donated all the milk I pumped to a milk bank, so that I could keep pumping at work to keep my supply up for the days when I wasn’t at work.

  Anyway – I know it feels stressful to leave your baby if you don’t know whether she’s going to accept feeding or not, but she won’t starve herself, and, if you go out without her, she’ll soon resign herself to either taking a bottle from your partner in your absence or waiting a few hours until you get back. She WILL survive either even if she isn’t too happy about it! Hope that helps.

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• Jen

  June 4, 2011 at 6:52 pm · Reply

  I had this problem with my little girl when she was a similar age, I ebf and wanted to be able to pop out occasionally, but she seemed to hate the bottle. She would splutter and gag and then go mad when she saw the bottle again. After hearing good things about it, we tried the Medela Calma Solitaire teat and it really seemed to work, they are expensive for a teat (about £14) but as we only needed to use it once in while we just got one and it really seemed to work for our daughter. It has some sort of valve system so she has to work hard to get the milk like she does on the breast and it doesnt just flow out like other teats do. Hope this helps x

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• Lisa Lactivist

  December 11, 2011 at 10:51 am · Reply

  Here are some more ideas from the :

  have you tried giving her milk from a cup? by EBF do you mean exclusively breast fed or expressed breast feeding (sorry I’m not with it with the abbreviations!) If she’s exclusively breastfed then chances are she won’t take bottles, my ED would not take a bottle or a dummy ever. However you can feed expressed breast milk from a cup, sit her in your lap and hold the cup to her lips, and let her sip or sometimes they dip their tongues in like a little kitten. Just be careful to hold the cup so she’s sipping, obviously not pouring any milk down her throat. The La Leche League website has more information on non bottle ways to feed milk to breastfed babies. My ED also refused every kind of sippy cup, and with YD we didn’t bother with sippy cups, when she started to eat solid food we gave her water from a cup, at first we held the cup for her but she soon learned to hold it herself. IMO bottles and sippy cups are designed for bottlefed babies and breastfed babies often don’t know what to do with them lol.

  have you tried a doidy cup (or any cup) so she can lap it rather than bottle? When my daughter was in special care & we were swapping from tube feeding to breast feeding the special care nurse did this with her when she needed a top up (of my expressed milk). She did take from a bottle later on but we didn’t struggle although we did make sure it wasn’t me that bottle fed her to start with (just so she didn’t get too confused)

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