The battle of the bottle

In her early weeks when Nisha wouldn’t properly breast feed, I considered the bottle a bit of an enemy. A necessary tool to get milk into her, but not something she should get used to for fear of disrupting my milk supply. However, I hadn’t anticipated that she would go the other way and reject the bottle altogether, even with expressed milk. It took us a little while to realise it; the first few times we assumed that she was just not hungry. But after a few more tear and milk soaked bibs were making an appearance in the laundry, we realised we had a date-ruining issue.

But I’m nothing if not determined (read stubborn) and so we began a plan to champion the bottle. Alex had booked an evening out for us, which gave us a decent deadline. We tried different positions, temperatures, feeders, and times. But Nisha was having none of it. Finally we caved and bought a different bottle brand, rather than our trusty Phillips Avent. I had previously hesitated on this; it’s just an expensive experiment (1 Tommee Tippee bottle = £6.50). Also we were dubious that a different teat shape would make all the difference.

To our surprise, it’s the new bottle that has proved the breakthrough. That and the fact that a doctor gave us permission to ‘insist’ (read let her cry a bit). There is still considerable protest before a bottle feed and we didn’t make our date night, but it’s in the right direction. I’m hoping that we can get her used to it and then go back to her old bottles. Otherwise we have an expensive purchase coming up….