I need to transition my baby to a bottle. How did you do this?

Our Mommy MD Guide’s reply: When I went back to work after three wonderful months at home, I had to work fast to teach my first baby how to drink from a bottle. I was warned to introduce some of the feedings by bottle earlier, but just didn’t want to go to all the trouble. It was so much easier to just flop down in a chair and nurse. Pumping breast milk and then putting it in a bottle and heating it just didn’t seem efficient at the time. I had to pay the price for procrastinating though, when she completely rejected the bottle. I was to go back to work the next week, and when I realized the predicament I had gotten myself into, I became frantic. I called our pediatrician’s office, and the nurse suggested that I offer the bottle for five minutes at a time. I was to let her cry and fuss for 20 minutes, and then try again. I was to do this as many times as necessary.

“When she’s hungry enough, she’ll take it,” the nurse assured me. On the fourth attempt, my baby grabbed the nipple of the bottle and drained the contents in record time. I didn’t make that same mistake with the other two children. —Lesley Burton-Iwinski, MD

Dr. Iwinski is a mom of 20- and 18-year-old daughters and a 14-year-old son, a retired family physician, and a parent and teacher educator with Growing Peaceful Families, in Lexington, KY.