New experience

Today, I bottle-fed Kate myself for the first time. It was a totally new experience, and I felt strange.

From the onset, I was determined to breastfeed and was steadfast in my belief to only breastfeed without introducing the bottle to Kate (after hearing stories of nipple confusion and babies rejecting the breast). It was after Kate was 6wks old that hubs and I decided to make the introduction - I felt that I was ready to start expressing milk for various reasons; and I also wanted hubs to feel the intimacy and bond with Kate during feeding.

She's a clever one, displaying no problems with bottle-feeding; nor did she reject me after. I was very pleased.

The number of times that she's been bottlefed has decreased through the past weeks and sometime this week, hubs raised his concern that Kate isn't feeding too well from the bottle. She fussed, cried and he'd to change bottles and teats in an attempt to get her to feed.

Since I was going back to work in a few weeks' time, having her reject the bottle now is not an option (it'd be a disaster, really. I don't want my baby to starve!). So hubs and I decided that if he's around to help out, I'll express milk whenever possible so we can 'train' Kate and allow her time to get used to bottle-feeding again.

That's how I ended up with the new experience this afternoon. I don't mind it, since it's an eventuality that I'll bottlefeed her, but I do prefer breastfeeding. It's much more intimate and it totally reinforces my role as her provider.

Here's keeping the fingers crossed for successful bottlefeeding training!