What age do I start LO on EBM?

[noonie]

my little one is 5 weeks young today - what age do I start offering an expressed bottle?
Also is there any guidelines as to how much I should be offering.
thanks.

[MJMom]

I don't think there is an age by which you can or can't offer an expressed bottle.  If your child takes it, then great!  Because I knew I was going back to work, I offered at 2 weeks old just to get her used to the idea of a bottle and gave my DD one bottle a day of EBM.  As far as guideline...  it seemed so haphazard this young.  She would sometimes drink as little as an ounce or as much as four ounces.  Not sure if there is a better guideline though.

[MLK]

The earlier you offer the bottle, the more likely your baby is to take so now's a good time to try. At first I'd only offer 30 ml or so until s/he gets the hang of it. Then if you are replacing a feed  I think the guidelines are 150ml per kg a day up to 3 months, split between the number of feeds. So eg if your baby weighs 4 kg, then that's 4X150=600 ml per day, and split between 6 feeds is 100ml per feed.

[Samuel's mum]

Josie never had a bottle. She just did cup feeding and then open cups and straw cups. I'm just mentioning our story to show there aren't any rules about this.

[noonie]

ok - i remember something my midwife said about waiting till 6 weeks of age.  ?!?!  But im sure we will be fine if I start now (see how that goes)

[jana224]

When my DD was born, the lactation consultant and newborn nurse both told me to wait until 5-6 weeks to introduce the bottle nipple for fear of nipple confusion and once BF was well established so that I could skip a feeding without messing up the whole supply/demand thing.  I don't know if nipple confusion is an urban myth, if it happens a lot or a little, I don't know, but I waited a month before introducing the bottle and the pacifier, and we had no troubles. 

Also Emma's right:  there are lots of ways of doing these things, and cup drinking is becoming more common for LOs.