My 3mo daughter used to take expressed milk without a problem up to around 10 weeks, then she suddenly developed an aversion to the silicone texture of both pacifiers and the bottle teats.

Instead of sucking ferociously like she used to, she would toy with the pacifier or bottle teat. It almost seemed like she ‘forgot’ how to suck, and from what I read online, this coincided with the time most babies lose their sucking reflex.

To be honest, I was finding it a bit annoying that she rejected the pacifier as it meant that I couldn’t keep her quiet while we were outdoors, but I could live with it. What I couldn’t live with was her not taking a bottle!

When I found out she was rejecting the bottle, I started going through ways of solving it.

First, I tried changing the teat flow. I graduated from the slow flow rate to medium flow, and she still wouldn’t take the bottle.

I bought a bottle warmer. We experimented with different temperatures. She still wouldn’t take the bottle.

Then I smelled my thawed and heated milk one day and realised it smelled very soapy. I googled it and realised I had high lipase milk! I started scalding my milk by heating it up to 82 degrees, and then cooling it right down. She didn’t take the bottle. I also tried giving her freshly expressed milk – again, she didn’t take the bottle.

That’s when I had to admit…. SHE JUST DIDN’T LIKE THE BOTTLE!

Bottle feeding her led to tears and our attempts were obviously upsetting her. I was distraught and read so many articles about how to teach her to accept the bottle. I knew I definitely didn’t want to starve her into accepting the bottle (which multiple people recommended).

The most useful article I read was here. I read about the Intermittent Bottle By Mom (IBBM) method and decided I would try it out. It didn’t work that well as she wasn’t sucking at all from the bottle. However, it seems to have worked for others after they persisted.

That article helped me realise though that silicone could be the issue with my daughter. She rejected both pacifiers and bottle teats at the same time, so she had obviously developed an aversion to the texture.

I needed to find a way to desensitise her to silicone… now, if only there was a way I could get a silicone layer when I was latching her on to me…? Yes, there was! I used a Medela nipple shield!

Day 1

I applied a nipple shield in the morning when she would usually latch happily and she did latch for about 1 minute before deciding she didn’t like it. She unlatched and tried again but I felt bad for her so I removed it after about 2-3 minutes.

Day 2

I tried again and this time she latched on for around 7 minutes before starting the latching / unlatching process. She was obviously confused! I used the nipple shield one or two more times on this day.

Day 3

I had realised that there was no point buying multiple bottles / teats because they were all exactly the same. I knew she had taken to the Philips Avent teats before so there was no reason why she couldn’t do so again. However, I succumbed to Minbie’s ad on Instagram and decided to order the 3m+ feeding kit.

Verdict

When the Minbie bottles arrived, I noticed the teats were different and softer than the existing ones I had from Philips. The shape was also more pointy (instead of rounded / flat).

I wasn’t optimistic that she would take the bottle, but when we tried feeding her with the 3p teat, she finally finished the entire bottle!

I’ve been giving her at least one bottle per day now since that day, and she hasn’t rejected the bottle once. Bonus, I didn’t have to throw away my freezer stash of high lipase milk!

Also. the Minbie teat fits on my existing Philips Avent Classic bottle caps so I didn’t have to keep distilling milk into the Minbie bottle; I just had to use Minbie teats with my existing bottles. Win!