Just Bottles

SO...

I am cleaning out closets (slowly but surely) and I ran across a tub of baby bottles.  I was going through them, cleaning them, packing them and getting ready to pass them along to an expecting mother.  


It made me laugh. 

It reminded me of the horrific ordeal that I went through when I was trying to wean Makayla from breast to bottle.  She was almost 12 weeks old and I had to get her used to a bottle before she went to daycare.  She did not like eating from a bottle and most of the time refused to eat.  It was our first, of many, 'trying' times.  She cried, I cried.  It was hard.  Very hard.  At one point, I even called the doctor, begging for advice.  What he said was - keep trying and don't worry.  The baby won't starve herself. 

Going through the tub of bottles made me laugh because it reminded me of the many different routes I took in weaning her to the bottle.  It reminded me of all my failed attempts to successfully have one feeding from a bottle.  Makayla never starved herself and after a week of Hell, many different types of bottles, combinations of breast milk/formula, and 100 different feeding positions, she finally took to a bottle.  We finally figured it out.  Ahhhh.

Here's one bottle that we tried.  Thank goodness we didn't go with this one.  Just looking at the top half, there's already too many parts to clean.

This is one really made me laugh.  I thought that I needed to get a bottle that resembled the breast as much as possible...I thought maybe that would help...(it didn't)

This is what we ended up with - with both kids.  Thank goodness, too!  I get to throw the 'bottle' part away each time.  So much less cleaning and washing!

I'm glad I can laugh now (kind of) at the transition from breast to bottle with Makayla and I'm very thankful I didn't have that struggle with Mason.  Maybe I didn't have that struggle with Mason because I learned a thing or two from Makayla...

So, if anybody ever has a struggle with getting their baby to take to a cold, hard, bottle after they've been used to a warm, soft, cozy breast - you can talk to me.  I've been there, done that and learned several things - the most important being that the baby won't starve herself.