I'm totally exasperated with myself and even more worried now about going back to work full time. I just don't know how to feed Matthew his milk feeds during the day without me being there and breastfeeding him.
Last night I sterilized bottles and the trusty breast pump, ready for today because I thought I'd better see if he'll manage a bottle of milk, trialling the new teat I'd bought that's suitable for 6 month olds and a sippy cup type top for Avent bottles. Both applications were a total failure. He chewed the teat with his sharp little teeth, wouldn't suck on it at all, sang and talked to the bottle then cried. Then I tried the sippy cup type attachment, nothing seemed to come out of it and he was hungry, so more crying. Not wanting to waste 140ml of breastmilk, I used about 90ml of it to make up some rice cereal and he ate that up. Then I put the left over milk in a normal sippy cup and he gargled it and splashed it around. So then I simply took the top off the cup and basically poured it slowly into his mouth and watched it pour out again. And about 15 minutes later he was giving me his signs that he wanted another feed (whinging, nuzzling and chewing on my clothes) so I've just breastfed him to sleep.
What am I to do???? I'll clean up the mess now and resterilize everything and try again tomorrow, I guess. And keep trying. I don't know what I was expecting to happen when Matthew hasn't had a bottle for six months. I feel like I'm going to have to teach him how to use a bottle again and it just feels so wrong.
And tomorrow and Thursday I'm going to try to drop him off at the carer's house at 8:15am for an hour to find out how organised I'm going to have to be....
Bookmarks