A good day

Today has been (so far - touch wood) a very good day with Chicken, and as you can see, she looks pretty pleased with herself!

The bottle in the foreground is the main reason Chicken has had a good day.  Don't get me wrong, she's been great all day, happy and giggly and smiling at anyone who looks at her.  But that bottle means that I can go to my friends hen's night (bachelorette party) in a month and enjoy the cocktails that will be on offer.  That bottle means that I will be able to go on a girls night with the ladies in my ante-natal group.  That bottle means that I can have a good time at my friends wedding in July!  That bottle means quite a bit it seems!  Let me bring you up too speed.

I am breastfeeding Chicken.  From the time she was one month old I expressed and Andrew would give her a bottle before she went to bed.  We wanted to make sure she would take a bottle because I wanted to go be able to go out occasionally (not just drink there are other things I wanted to do too!) and for that to happen she would need to take a bottle.

Chicken having her first bottle.  February 2011

This all went well, and for the next couple of months I would occasionally express and Andrew would give her a bottle.  Then I got lazy.  Its quite a faff to express, you have to time it right, it takes just as long as a feed (sometimes even longer!) the milk only lasts a couple of days in the fridge, you have to sterilise the bottle and so on.... Basically around three months Chicken began to refuse the bottle.  We tried different times of day, different bottles and teats, different person, different times of the day etc etc.  Needless to say, it didn't go well, there were a few tantrums from a few peoples (mostly Chicken, but sometimes either one of us)

Anyway, I was talking to a friend and she said that around three/four months babies can go off their bottles if you don't keep it up.  This did not make me happy!  However, I decided to give it a rest while we went back to NZ, and stop stressing.  That is until the invite to the hen's night arrived, I knew I had to take action!  This evening I bought some ready made formula and set Andrew up to feed Chicken, she was relaxed, a little hungry but not starving so off he went... and it worked!  She drank 75mls (2.5oz) and looked pretty pleased with herself.  She loved holding the bottle and 'being in charge'.  I didn't get any photos of it this time because I was hiding in the kitchen, I didn't want her to think there was a better offer out there.  Tomorrow we'll have the rest of the carton and over the next week I'll start expressing again and we'll keep up the bottles.  I am NOT letting it slip this time.

Isn't that a great smile!