No, let ME do it!

If the nature of their births didn’t give us enough warning of the stubbornness of my two girls- here’s some more anecdotal proof. Elizabeth has spent 5 days at school (daycare) so far and drank a TOTAL of 21 ounces of milk from a bottle. We’re talking like 2 to 3 ounces in a 9 hour period (when it should be more like 9 to 14 ounces). Luckily for her, I go over at lunch and nurse her (no worries as she’s still got two chins, dripping cheeks and multiple rolls on her thighs). We’ve been trying for months to “teach” her to drink from a bottle- different people giving her the bottle, different bottles/nipples, different times of day, different positions, etc. Really the works. I think I’ve thrown out more pumped milk in the last 8 weeks than I ever did in 19 months of nursing Linda. So last night I had her teacher warm a bottle for when I picked her up because I was just not going to be able to nurse her in the car in the 20 degree windy weather. Elizabeth was asleep when I got there and was quite miffed that I woke her up to put her in her snow suit, so, half jokingly, I said to her, “Oh, you must want a bottle” and put the nipple to her lips. She sucked that thing in, slurped down the 3 oz. in 10 minutes and wouldn’t even let me pull it out to burp her. Son of a gun! Not that it does any good that she’ll drink a bottle for the only person on earth that doesn’t need to give her a bottle. So this morning I armed her teachers with the exact same bottle with the same 3 oz. and a receiving blanket that I wore around my torso all night so that whoever fed her would “smell like Mommy”. They tried it for 30 minutes this morning- no go. So they switched to another type of bottle. Nothing. With other infants now requiring attention at this point, the teacher put Elizabeth in a bouncy seat next to her chair (she was going to feed two kids at once) and as she placed the bottle near her face, Elizabeth grabbed the bottom of the bottle and pushed the nipple into her mouth. A little surprised, Ms. Robin let go of the bottle and looked at her- ferociously sucking back the milk and holding the bottle on her own. Ms. Robin bent over again to provide some support of the bottle for my stubborn super-child, but Elizabeth stopped drinking, looked at her and screamed. Ms. Robin let go and Elizabeth resumed drinking. She drank the whole bottle (grunting if anyone else touched it) by herself. The one thing we didn’t try- let the 3-mo old feed herself the bottle! We’ll have to wait and see if this actually solves the bottle-feeding issues.