Isabelle was born early at 33 + 4 weeks and is currently in SCBU thriving.

She is breast feeding really well, but isn't strong enough to keep it up for 24 hours so is still being tube feed during the day also.

She is currently 35 + 2 and the only thing keeping us in SCBU is her strength to breast feed 24/7.

I would like to change to expressing and bottle feeding, but my husband isn't keen... I need to get her home asap as being in hospital 24/7 is turning me into an emotional wreck....

Has anyone been in a similar situation? I need advice on what teats to use etc, currently I have Tommee Tippee bottles, but the hospital say these are too stiff/rigid for a prem baby.

All advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you xx

I used Avent bottles when giving expressed milk and moved on to tommee tippee after she went through a phase where she wouldn't take a bottle. I think it is a case of try them and see.

I know people have expressed and bottle fed but I personally think I would have struggled with it as its so time consuming and you are looking after a baby as well. I had my lo breast feeding before coming home. Could you take a break from the hospital and let them use a bottle for the day? When I wasn't there my lo was bottlefed and she happily went between both until she decided to be awkward at 4 months corrected and wouldn't take bottles or dummy's!

From bitter experience I'd bug them to check for a tongue tie first of all - lots of my daughter's feeding difficulties (she was a 33+6 baby) were dismissed as her size, tiredness, jaundice... recently I found a minor tongue tie hiding away there (advantages of her gob wide open screaming with teething huh?) which I think, coupled with the tiny mouth+massive boobs factor and the other factors was enough to tip the balance and make things worse for us.

For what it's worth - I was in the exact same situation you are (didn't have room on the transitional care proper bay for me so they'd plonked me living on a hell hole postnatal ward) and my mental health was getting so battered (the regular fights, people being kicked off the ward by social services, complete looney tunes etc didn't help) that I made the choice you're facing and went for the option of expressing and bottle feeding... kept that up for a while when we got home until a) the breast pump died and b) I realised how utterly ridiculous it was that we'd fought for years to have this child and I was getting no enjoyment whatsoever because it was feed > pray she'd go to sleep > pump > feed... so we didn't ever manage to make it for a successful latch - tried nipple shields on the suggestion of the NICU... health visitor told us off for that... health visitor's suggestion was just more skin-to-skin, more skin-to-skin... nothing was going to work.

In hindsight - my only regret is the time we spent on that ward being extended as it was - my mental health hasn't recovered at all (we weren't very well treated by our hospital - that's a bit of an understatement) and feeling crap about the decisions I made.

As for teats - we got NO advice from the hospital whatsoever - they'd flip out and panic if you asked for any non-boob related advice. The only advice we were given (from one staff member basically sticking her neck out and risking being in big bother) was to bring the bottles we had at home in to try out - to make sure we didn't end up in a situation where we got home and she couldn't feed from them... happened we'd bought Avent (old style, not the natural ones) but she took to them just fine... although looking at her since then - NOTHING keeps her away from food (she was very peed off when her feeding tube was removed and she was expected to actually DO some work for the feeding).

We were home either the very end of week 35 or beginning of week 36 (I think it was end of week 35 but my memory is hazy on that front) if that helps.

We left the hospital bottle feeding and expressing. This is a lot of work I felt already battered from the months in hospital so to try that with a new baby at home it lasted 3 weeks expressing at home and then I gave up. I was a little sad but I needed the weight from the shoulders and finally enjoy being a mother with a new baby.

I am all for breast feeding too though but in DD1s case we never got to the stage of a strong suck. Your LO has made great progress and I'd be inclined to see how it goes.

However if you do decide you just simpily need this NICU journey to be over (and I completely understand this!) good teats tend to be NUK and MAM, they are much easier for a prem/breastfed baby to take (we found this with our prem and full term baby)

Cool - I've bought MAM bottles this time... didn't buy them for any reason other than the pretty patterns on them if I'm honest (and the fact it's not just the choice of pink or blue... do NOT get me started on this one...)

Considering both grandmas can't figure out how to assemble Avent bottles - this could be very very amusing since they're the ones with the valves at the bottom!

I know the ease of sterilising them is amazing too. The steriliser was a waste of dosh!

Have you tried cup feeding? I did it with both my prems whilst alternating with breast feeding and personally I found it worked really well . Everyone's different though so maybe worth a try? Xx good luck xx

Sarah xx

We did try cup feeding and she thought it was great, but the hospital will not let her home whilst cup feeding.

We did try the hospital bottle and teat today, and I felt so bad, so didn't like it at all, and in the end she was sick - I felt like such a failure as a mother - that I could do this to her and put her through so much.

The next feed we tried the tommee tippee bottle we bought in from home with the number 2 teat and she gulped the 50mls down in 10 minutes and wasn't sick at all.

I just hope this wasn't a one off and she is strong enough to keep it up so we can get home where we belong..... xx

Woah! Stop! One thing you definatley aren't is a failure! Babies are all different and take to different things xxx I know the pressure of seeing that light at the end of the tunnel of going home if only they can take the feed, good luck with tommy tippee!!

Sarah cxxx

Ella is still being tube fed, we are not really progressing much with breastfeeding or bottlefeeding at the moment because she keeps desaturating when we try

I hope to breastfeed her when she is eventually able to, but also plan to have my OH do a couple of bottle feeds a day when she eventually gets home using the massive expressed milk stash we're currently building up.

I'll be buying the Dr Brown's preemie bottles for that. We used Dr Brown's with Alex and didn't look back. We had first used the Tomee Tippee ones but Alex was really refluxy and windy and the Dr Brown's bottles made a huge positive difference.

It is so much work exclusively expressing. I did it for 10 weeks with Alex and couldn't go on after that.

Laura x