The Big Day

It is said that the Tommee Tippee bottle is the closest you'll get to breastfeeding.

 

I was all set for The Big Day. I had researched extensively about how to express, expressing

options, storing breast milk and sterilizing bottles. I was more than prepared, or so I thought.

I had been postponing this day for a while because I'd hoped that a bottle teat would never touch MY baby's lips. In my idealistic pre-mum world, I planned to exclusively breastfeed my Elijah until the age of 6 months, and then move on to solids and breastfeed until he was a year old. If the need arose for me to express, he would drink it from a cup and not a bottle. I had read about bottles being associated to 'nipple confusion'. All I wanted was the most natural rearing methods. It couldn't be that difficult, could it?

Well yes, it's more of a challenge than I had imagined. 

The Big Day, Friday 12 July 2013
I fed Elijah as usual at around 10:00.
Bathed him at 10:30.
Continued feeding at 11:00 until he was asleep.
At around midday I started manually pumping for 30-45 minutes and expressed a measly 30ml of milk.
Stored milk in fridge.
Waited patiently for baby to awake.
Shortly after I'd expressed, I heard his cry.
My sister, who was also looking forward to The Big Day, held him in her arms and fed him his milk.
He sucked, he felt, he bit, he spat out and he cried, and cried, and cried.
She pacified him a bit and tried again and again. He would just not budge. He refused point blank to accept a teat rather than a nipple, even if the contents was exactly the same.
When my mum arrived home at 18:00 and saw the bottle, she couldn't wait to hear how he responded to a teat.
Disappointment hit when she heard it was unsuccessful. In all efforts to persevere, she filled the bottle with some warm water, and successfully fed him about 10 millilitres of it.

My Elijah may not be a fool, but his mother is determined. With my convenient new electric pump, my baby will be sucking his bottle in no time, and mommy will be able to attend her adults only Baby Shower on 04 August 2013.