ballroomboot

be open minded and experiment and do what works for you,not what others dictate(health visitors and gps and midwives) e.g they will swear blind that breast is best (in my case it wasn't, not because i didn't want to, but because my baby is allergic to milk protein and soy and had bad reflux and was so so exhausting to look after).. do not feel guilty if you can't breast feed for any reason and bear in mind that expressing is much easier said than done for alot of people...soory to deviate from the point and definitely not trying to put you off what is a beautiful thing............ if you have a refluxy/ colicy/ windy baby (in my experience), doctor brown bottles helped(although cleaning them is a pain). also the size/staging of the teat is important to consider - my baby was/is a slow feeder and has teats which are 3mths behind his actual age ( he wasn't premature - i think it's because of reflux). you can tell if the teat is too fast if milk comes out the side of the mouth and too slow if the baby is sucking very hard to get enough milk and as a result becomes very burpy. now that my son is bigger we use avent - no probs and much easier to clean. p.s if you are going to introduce the bottle - do it around three weeks, not too late as they may not accept it (this has happened to a few of my pals). combined feeding (in my experience) is about when you introduce the teat - too early and they get confused, too late and they won't do it...the sucking mechanism babies use on breast and teat are two completely different moves (apparently, told tome by a specialist breastfeeding nurse) so i reckon the marketing is just a gimmick.