Up to this point, only one of my children has ever had a bottle: Honeybun. We started Honeybun on bottles when she was about 6 weeks old as I was heading back to work and had one night a week where I had to be away from her for about 5 hours. I remember feeling like beginning bottles was such a momentous occasion when she got her first bottle, like it was a rite of passage or something. I proudly took pictures while hubby awkwardly tried to get her to take the bottle.
I now realize bottles don’t really matter. There is nothing magical about baby’s first bottle and no reason a baby ever needs a bottle if s/he is always with mommy.
This was the case with Sugarplum, I was never away from her so she never required a bottle. I decided to wait until she was older and started straight with sippy cups. I transitioned Honeybun off the bottle to a sippy cup by 7 months so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem for Sugarplum to go straight. I first tried the cup with Sugarplum at about 5 months and she couldn’t figure out how to suck and she refused the expressed milk even after I removed the valve from the cup so the milk would just pour out into her mouth. It was months before she would take milk from the cup (and even then we had our struggles, see “Normalizing Nursing”).
In preparing for Doodle, I bought new nipples for Honeybun’s bottles (Playtex VentAire which she took easily) figuring Doodle would need them when I returned back to work as I intended to leave him home with daddy but that didn’t happen. When we started having oversupply troubles (see “Too Much of a Good Thing”) and I read about how Doodle would be a perfect candidate for developing a bottle preference, I decided to take him with me to work all the time. It’s actually worked about because now he’s used to being in the dance studio with me and I don’t have to worry about overstressing our babysitter with all three kids.
I’ve stopped taking him with me when I teach in the evenings but I’m gone and back before he requires a feed so it’s not a problem. However, in the fall I’ll start a new schedule while I’ll be working longer hours and don’t plan to take him with me as hubby will be home and it’s really not the best thing for Doodle. so we will see if he needs a bottle a few nights a week or if he will just settle into a routine of not needing to feed while I’m gone (I’ll only be away 2 ½ to 3 hours but all my babies tend to feed every 2 hours during the day).
[…] doesn’t come with me I have to worry about pumping and whether or not baby is going to take a bottle. I dislike my happy baby screaming when s/he sees me because mommy = milk. I dislike that cuddling […]