No bottles here!

Okay so that statement isn't exactly true. There are bottles here. Lots of bottles. More than we know what to do with. I have tried essentially every type of bottle that claimed to be the "miracle bottle." My baby girl doesn't want any of them. I have tried them all multiple times. Multiple times in a day. Many days a week. I've had my husband try without me in the house. My moms and mother-in-law have all tried. My neighbors and friends have tried. Lilleigh doesn't want anything to do with a bottle.

Lilleigh didn't always do this. She DID take a bottle. We began giving her a bottle right around 4 weeks, when the lactation consultants suggest you introduce it. I thought we were doing everything right. She took it, which was awesome. But we weren't consistent. We didn't realize we weren't consistent though because I'd leave and leave a bottle with the person watching her. I guess I didn't realize that many of these times she didn't end up needing the bottle. Still, some experts say that this shouldn't matter, that the frequency of the bottle (once a week versus every other day or more) shouldn't matter, that some babies will stop taking a bottle no matter how often they were given it.

Sometimes I get the feeling people don't believe me. They start giving me advice - "Just do... [a, b, and c]... then she'll take it. It worked for my baby." I tell them I've tried that and that it didn't work. They give me a sympathetic look, but I know they think I'm doing something wrong, that I'm just not trying hard enough.

My friend Randi watched Lilleigh a few weeks ago to give my husband and I a date. (Sweet friend, I know.) I left her with a bottle and told her to be my guest, to please prove me wrong and get her to take a bottle. She confidently told me it wouldn't be a problem, that they'd get it. She's a mom, so I knew if anyone could get her to take that bottle, it'd be Randi. When we left, I really hoped that she'd prove me wrong, that Lilleigh would suck down that bottle with no complaints. But sure enough, when we got back, the bottle was still full and Lilleigh was hungry.

This has happened multiple times with multiple people. Typically the story is that she got hungry and was crying, so they offered her the bottle, which then made her angry and fuss more. But once they took the bottle away, she settled down and stopped acting hungry. It's as if she says, "No problem. I'll wait." At least she has a good attitude about it.

She won't suck on her toys or any pacifiers either. She'll suck on her fingers, burp cloths, loveys - anything human or soft. But today she actually sorta sucked (one suck) on her Wubbanub. She held the soft animal in her hands and then chewed on its limbs. I'm hopeful. Maybe playing with that long enough will get her sucking the paci part... and then just maybe she'll take a bottle!

A friend of mine has a baby who did the same thing and just recently (at 5 months old!) decided to take a bottle. She says she thinks it must have just been a phase. I'm hopeful!