$100 Worth of Bottles My Baby Refuses to Use

Ahhh. The frustration of the first parenting hurdle. It seems my two month old son will not accept a baby bottle. At six weeks we decided to introduce a bottle and the little guy gulped down three ounces like a champ. The next night the same thing occurred, but a few days later we gave him another bottle and he refused. He eventually drank, but not without a lot of fuss. A day later he wouldn’t accept the bottle from anyone.


So I drove out to the store and bought every bottle and nipple I could find on the shelf. I also ordered a few that I couldn’t find in store from Babies-R-Us. That afternoon he drank from one of the bottles twice, but the next day he was back to pushing it away. $100 later it seem our little man does not want to drink from any of the bottles we purchased.

I read every article I could find on the Internet and tried every trick I could get my hands on, but our baby cannot be tricked. He wants breast milk right from the tap and he refuses to accept anything else.

Am I frustrated? Definitely, but I’ve decided not to get all worked up about the issue. I was hoping our little one would take a bottle once a day so my husband could help out with late night feedings, but I’ve decided not to get too upset about the fact that he is refusing. The truth is that I treasure the closeness of breastfeeding and have no immediate need for the baby to eat any other way. For the time being I can deal with the lack of sleep and since I’m not planning on returning to work for a few months there is no need to rush him to take a bottle.

So what’s a girl to do with $100 worth of bottles that her baby refuses to use? Well for the time being my husband and I are still trying to get the baby to drink from a bottle, we are just doing it in a calm and stress free manner. We hope that he’ll take to one of the bottles eventually, but if all else fails we’ll try to use a cup instead. Believe it or not we’ve had quite a bit of success with a cup already.

I figure this is the first of many parenting hurdles we’ll run into and it won’t be the first time we drop a load of cash in the hopes of helping us solve a problem.

4 thoughts on “$100 Worth of Bottles My Baby Refuses to Use”

  1. Pick one, and keep trying (gently of course). He will get used to it eventually but, you have to keep consistent! All the switching around just adds to the stress of it all. Good luck!

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  2. We found tremendously valuable help with bottle feeding from a lactation consultant affiliated with the birthing hospital. Ask around for someone like that who is happy to help you integrate bottle feeding.

    Stick with one bottle, as the previous commenter said. We had better luck with a regular flow nipple rather than a slow flow nipple at 1 week old, so babies do vary on what they want vs. what the manufacturers recommend. Some of the tricks the consultant used that we hadn't known were to push his cheeks in, to support his lower jaw and move it up and down slightly, and to angle the bottle to apply some downward pressure on the tongue. Some of this requires having three hands, and it was all much easier after having the consultant show us exactly how to do some of it.

    We've gotten our little guy used to refrigerated or room temperature formula, but he definitely responded differently to different temperatures at first.

    Best of luck!

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  3. @Anonymous – Thanks for the advice. We picked a bottle today and decided to stick with that one for awhile.

    @Michael – I actually consulted a lactation consultant, but unfortunately she wasn't much help. She seemed much more interested in issues with breastfeeding than bottle feeding, which is unfortunate. I appreciate your suggestions, (I can use all the help I can get), and plan to try the tricks you provided. We gave him a bottle today and were quite successful. Now, we'll see if it was a one time occurrence or a repeatable event!

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  4. My son never had a bottle and while I thought it would be really challenging at first it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The four or five months before we started him drinking from a cup passed really quickly. I'm not one to say that you must do things a certain way and I understand lots of reasons to do bottles but it is possible to just skip it.

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