Finally!

We had a breakthrough this morning. Every day for the last 2-3 weeks we've been trying to get Caelan to take the bottle. It's been a LONG, HARD road with a LOT of crying and point-blank refusing. Once a day it would end in him completely hysterical and thinking I was trying to poison him. It took a lot of patience and persistence!! We'd bought a sipper and replaced the teat with that which he seemed to think was a little better, he have a few sucks from it before chucking a fit. I kept doing this each day, trying the sipper and the teat, I would even put the boob in his mouth and when he was sucking swapping it for the other. This worked for a while - sometimes 10-20mls before he'd scream and not take it back. We even had Chris trying in the weekend and me being out of the room and completely quiet. It seemed he did better taking it from me - perhaps because I am feeder??? Not sure. It goes against everything we'd be told anyway - we were told the only way to get them to accept it if there's a problem is from someone other than breastfeeding mummy. What do "they" know?!?! hehehe

Anyway, I kept going and slowly he'd started taking a little bit from the bottle, it progressed to a bit more with Monday and yesterday being about 100mls. Then he would refuse all together and that would be the end of it - and 100mls isn't near enough for a feed! ANYWAY this morning I stabbed heaps more holes into one of our teats and gave it another go. It's always a bit of a fight to begin with, but he started drinking and because he was able to get more with each suck HE DRANK 260mls!!! I was sooooooo excited! What a good boy. Yay for him. Well really - yay for me!!! We may be a step closer to me being able to get a break again and not have to starve the boy to do so. I'm pretty damned excited about it.

It seems a little odd to struggle so hard to get your baby to take the bottle and then have to express 260mls and freeze it - a long, painful (literally!) process but it's worth it! Now we have to start offering the bottle at different times, I've been doing it for the first feed of the day as he's more hungry then after his long sleep. Now I've gotta move it around in the day. I'm so excited!! And I just can't hide it!!