How do I convince my baby that bottles are good?!

[Princess]

My son is now 16 weeks. He has always been a very hungry, exclusively breastfed baby. I always thought I was a bit 'knitted yogurt' and breastfeeding would be right up my street but I have to confess to my surprise it is not an experience I have particularly enjoyed.

We have overcome some nasty bouts of thrush and frustrating attempts at expressing and after 4 months and getting my son to a healthy 15llbs, we have decided it's time to move him on to formula. The problem is, he is no longer accepting a bottle! Up until 9 weeks he would take the odd bottle of expressed milk from either Mr P or myself but I then struggled to keep up with the Little Man's appetite so opted to do every feed from the breast as expressing just became a bit of a faff.

I have tried various teats (interestingly he will take water from an AVENT no.1 teat). This morning, he seemed interested in the AVENT magic cup having a few slurps of formula before becoming suspicious and rejecting it again.

If anyone has any tips as to how I can make formula more appealing please can you let me know. I would love to crack this before we move on to solids (which I don't think will be too far off as he is so curious about what's on our plates and is grabbing at everything)!

Thanks

Princess

[sophie13]

It's always a tricky one, this. Do you reckon he's not keen on the taste of formula or is it the bottles themselves?

If it's taste you could always try mixing it with your breast milk (starting off with it being mostly your milk then increasing the ratio over time until he's used to formula). Or try different brands to see if he prefers it.

If it's the bottles he doesn't like then it might be a bit more tricky - sometimes it helps if someone else does the bottle feeds to start with because it could be that he prefers to snuggle up with you. They are cunning creatures and he could have worked out that if he kicks off enough you'll feed him yourself in the end!

Sorry if you've already done the above - it's so difficult getting it right isn't it?

Best of luck.

[womanofdulwich]

This is one of the hardest things and if you can get someone else- partner or friend it is best as they cannot smell your milk. we used own milk in bottles to start off with - to minimise the change- but really staying calm is a help ( on so easy to say it now).

[Princess]

Thanks to everyone who has pm'd me and for the advice above. As Mr P is normally at work for every feed it's been a bit tricky to try to arrange to have someone else here to try and coax him into a bottle at 10am every day. However, as we have a long weekend ahead of us Mr P will be on duty in about an hours time for the next 4 days! We have a variety of formulas, an assortment of bottles, cups and teats and all the time in the world so fingers crossed, we will get there.

Thanks again

Princess