When to introduce bottle ?

[Janet]

My daughter is 5-week old now. She's a breast-fed baby. When she was few days old we introduced bottle to her (thanks to poor advice from the pediatrician) and she had nipple confusion. To make a long story short, thank goodness I managed to get her back on track with breastfeeding and stay away completely from bottle. I do know several moms that tell me their babies will not take bottles anymore because they introduce bottle to them too late.
I'm totally enjoying my time breastfeeding my baby. I'm a stay-home mom, however, I'm sure there will be a time when I will be away for a while and someone need to feed her EBM via bottle. Now, I'm a little nervous with introducing bottle to her after what happened initially, I know definitely now is probably not the right time yet ?

 

[woollysheep]

5 weeks should be fine. Suggest you try expressed milk as the taste will be familiar to her. Get someone else to give her the bottle so she knows you breastfeed her and the bottle something other people give her. I would give her less than one bottle a day (maybe every 2-3 days?), just enough so she knows what to do with it.

Consider how soon and how long you will want to leave her for. If you need to be away all day in the next month or so, she will need a bottle. However, a lot of moms find that from about 4-5 months baby can be left with solids while they are away. Two of my children drank out of feeder beakers from 5 months old and one drank through a straw.

 

[DoubleBlessings]

I understand the "in case of emergency" thoughts but consider introducing a cup instead.