Success story: Lizzie and Leo 

My name is Lizzie and my little boy is Leo. Leo is almost 5 months old at the time of writing this

I knew during my pregnancy that I wanted to try and give breastfeeding a go, due to all the health benefits for not only Leo but also me. I was however quite relaxed that if it didn’t go as planned that I’d be happy giving him formula. I’ve been very lucky in my breastfeeding journey that Leo latched on well at the beginning and I have a good supply. He only lost 2% of his birth weight and has been on the 91st centile ever since birth. I never had any pain, only a little bit of soreness but that quickly went and touch wood (!!)

I had initially always planned to combi feed but I never really found much information out there on it and so was a bit confused where to even start, especially as midwives and NCT (in fact, most people!!) tell you not to introduce a bottle until 6 weeks or BF is established. I also had no idea how to pump or where to start with formula and was finding breastfeeding easy, so I decided to not bother. 

There was one night, when Leo was around 3 weeks, where I felt incredibly overwhelmed with emotion and my sister came round, asking if I’d tried a bottle and perhaps, she could try, so to take a bit of pressure of me. She helped me set up my breast pump and I got nearly 8oz from my first pump. We poured it into a bottle and she gave it to him and he did actually take it from her. He didn’t take it all, probably only about 3oz but I was so relieved he took it. 

The next night my husband tried and Leo just wasn’t having it. We had him in the ‘paced bottle feeding’ position and I left the room but Leo was incredibly upset and distressed, pushing the bottle away etc. I said to my husband to stop and we’ll try again another day. 

After that, we didn’t try for ages. We both got lazy, as I was finding breastfeeding easy and had no reason to be away from Leo. It was also so convenient breastfeeding, as it was always readily available for him, no need to pump, prep bottles, sterilise etc. I did however keep saying, we’ll try properly next week and we just never did. 

It has got to the point where I want to go out for dinner with friends or get my hair done and I can’t because I can’t really be away from him for more than 2 hours. We’d tried the bottle about a month ago and he got really distressed again, so it was at that point, I knew I needed to really do something about it. 

I brought Stacey from Feed Eat Speak’s then webinar (which is now a course) on bottle refusal and started putting the tips and techniques into practice. I wanted my husband to be the one to do it but with him not getting home from work until late, I decided to do it myself.

I chose a time in the afternoon where he was relatively happy and had been fed but wasn’t tired or hungry. I popped him into his bouncer, pumped around 30ml of fresh milk and then dipped the teat of the bottle into my expressed milk. I then played around with it with him, let him touch it, bopped him on the nose and just let him explore. He kept opening his mouth and putting the teat in but was just chewing it. We did this for around 10 minutes and he wasn’t upset but also didn’t really seem bothered. I put the bottle down and knew I had 4 hours before I had to discard my milk. Around 40 mins later, I tried again, this time rubbing it on his nose so that he opened wide and then I put it in and he just started sucking!! 3 mins later, all the milk had gone from the bottle. 

Day 2 came round and I ensured it was around the same time and again, he was in a happy, distracted mood. I rubbed it on his nose and he opened his mouth. I popped it in but again, he was just chewing initially but then started sucking, obviously realising that milk was coming out. 

I found that the distracted methods definitely suit Leo more. When he wakes up from a sleep, he’s awake and wants feeding, so I knew that then probably wouldn’t be the best time. 

It’s still very early days but he’s taken to this more than any other time before, so I am confident that if I keep persisting, he’ll be taking a bottle hopefully once a day I by no means want to stop breastfeeding but being able to go out and leave my husband with Leo, knowing he’ll take a bottle makes me very very happy!