Hitting the Bottle

Since I go back to work part-time again in August, and have a couple of times coming up where I'll have to be away for a half-day or so, we started working on getting Ellie to take a bottle about a month ago...maybe more. It has turned out to be quite an epic saga, wherein I have purchased one of just about every bottle on the market and presented each one to the tiny caesar, holding my breath and hoping that this one will gain her approval. Thumbs down, every time.

It's become a humorous little adventure, actually--every few days, I'll encounter a new idea and decide to try that out, dropping another $12 or so on a new bottle or trying out this or that trick (dipping the nipple in sugar water, putting apple juice in the bottle, putting her in the bouncy seat in front of the TV, yodeling Shakespearean sonnets...), only to be met again with the dreaded tongue-thrust and yucky face. We've tried Dr. Brown's, Avent, Playtex drop-ins, cute Winnie-the-Pooh bottles, Soothies, and two different "levels" of nipples for each, so you'd think she would have found one of them to be acceptable by now, but noooooo. She's already a finicky eater like her mother!

Funny, "they" say you're supposed to find bottles and pacifiers with nipples that most resemble your own, but I guarantee you that isn't necessarily true, because these are the pacifiers she likes:

Enough said.

And can't you just picture women walking down the baby aisle at Target, alternately peeking down their shirts and then examining bottles/pacifiers to find the perfect match? Or, as my mother-in-law added, yelling to their husbands, "Honey, do they look like THESE?!"

I tried explaining to Ellie-bug the importance of Mommy attending this NKOTB concert next week and knowing that my second-born won't be starving the entire time, but she didn't seem to care. Still, I've kept on trying to find a bottle that has--you knew it was coming--"The Right Stuff," and it turns out we may possibly, perhaps, MAYBE have a winner:

Yep, that's it: the Adiri Natural Nurser. Never mind that this thing looks more like it's ready to be shot into space than deliver milk to an infant (I imagine baby Spock drinking out of something like this), because Ellie has actually drank an ounce or two from it on three separate occasions now, and that's enough to earn my endorsement. I figure if we persist and let her practice on it several times a day between now and then, she'll be able to "hang tough" (groan!) while I'm rocking out with the New Kids, and then regularly when I'm at work. I didn't have to go back to work after having Keira until she was 10 months old, so it's going to be hard enough leaving Ellie without having to worry about her screaming for the Milk Lady the entire time I'm gone. Let's hope that "step by step" (okay, seriously, I'll stop now) Ellie-bug starts willingly hitting the bottle!