Still trying to train Madeline to eat from a bottle *sigh* I read some bottle-feeding tips over at ex machina the other day - hopefully the advice of a grandmotherly nurse will work for her as well as they did for little Eric ...
September 12, 2004
laura
"Home" is just another stamp in my passport.
all the tips that nurse marlene have worked wonders for our bottle feeding. eric drank 40 cc's in 4 minutes!? tonight. but it should be noted that most of the tips are meant for very, very wee ones whose airways are extremely sensitive to being blocked due to the position of their heads.
good luck!
Posted by: eric c snowdeal III | September 12, 2004 at 10:33 PM
Ah, but last night we did get the nipple past her tongue and we think she ate a little (very little - we put less than half an ounce in her bottles b/c it's all been a waste thus far) so it was valuable advice regardless!
Posted by: laura | September 13, 2004 at 07:59 AM
Good luck! I hope it all works out for you. It's good you keep trying maybe one of these days soon she will take it... Let us know!
Posted by: Jaime | September 13, 2004 at 06:29 PM
i've found the "cheek swoosh past tongue" technique works great for eric. and keeping his head tiled up slightly to maintain a clear airway seems to be really important. also, and i think i forgot to mention this in the main post, but as the bottle empties, i find that i need to slowly tip his head back to keep the nipple full of milk. nurse marlene said that the suck reflex is stronger if the nipple is full. and more stuff i forgot to mention - i've found it helps to rotate the bottle a quarter turn every 30 seconds or so and "work" the bottle back and forth. sage nurse marlene recommended doing both and i'll be darned if they don't seem to stimulate his sucking every time.
Posted by: eric c snowdeal III | September 13, 2004 at 09:03 PM
Thanks for the extra tips, Eric! I do appreciate you taking the time :)
Jaime, did you do anything special to get Nikyla to drink from her cup? I'm not sure where to start, if that's what we end up doing ...
Posted by: laura | September 13, 2004 at 10:32 PM
How about using a cup, spoon or eye dropper instead of a bottle?
Posted by: Helen | September 14, 2004 at 02:20 PM
Nope I just put in expressed breastmilk and tried it with her half tilted then eventually when she was on her back I could give her the cup, during the day. Eventually that cup helped me ween as well at night, but took a while. Nikyla was ATTACHED to nursing.
I even left and had my husband try to bottle feed, she cried until she fell asleep and still never took the bottle. We tried various nipplew, but nothing seemed to work. One that worked for our friend was the silicon one for the playtex bottles. We tried it and I put extra holes in it because I thought Nikyla was use to more of a flow than what the bottles gave, but to no avail. By the time I tried some of the different nipples she thought it was just fun to chew on and that was it. So hence I started using the soft spout sippy cup. She still doesn't like the plastic spout sippy cups... How their little personalities come out so early....
Posted by: Jaime | September 15, 2004 at 05:36 PM