Nipple confusion?

What's the deal with this?

My friends said her m/w told her not to give her baby a bottle (even of EBM) for the first 3 months to avoid nipple confusion. Problem is, he then never accepted a bottle and she had to keep b/f constantly until 9 months, which interferred with her study.

Her sister, however, gave one of her children a bottle of EBM at 3 days so she could swap easily while she was studying, and he's absolutely fine. No nipple confusion whatsoever.

Has anyone had any experiences good or bad with swapping between bottle and breast (even if bottle is still EBM)? Any info/opinions on this? TIA! Just starting thinking about it, and its bugging me!

I have used bottle and breast for my three right from the start and never had any problems with them accepting either.

i think nipple confusion comes in a bit later...my boy never got confused between a nipple and a dummy when he was only a couple of weeks old and in fact it helped him feed better.

Well we decided DH would give Daniel his dream feed (10:30pmish) so that I can get some sleep. This was decided way before he was born. We have waited until he was good at breastfeeding before introducing the bottle. He has had EBM outta the bottle for the past 2 nights. We haven't had any issues at all thus far

then there is the other advice that says to introduce a bottle to baby within the first month otherwise they will never take one. This would be after BF is established
One set of advice will always contradict the other, and babies are individual, they haven't read the books that tell us all this

Edited by Redbedrock

I guess its just up to the individual baby. I offered my two youngest babies bottles EMB within their first week and they took it fine THEN Mercedes spat the bottle and refuse to take it from 3mths onwards ( I was studing fulltime and had to bf between classes as she wouldnt except anything and lost weight) Alize wouldnt take the bottle after 8wks old. I tried and tried to get him to take it but no he wouldnt.

I had Hannah on a feed of EBM per day from 2 weeks old because I was going back to part-time work (albiet only one morning a week, but I still couldn't take her) when she was 6 weeks old. I waited until bf was established. Anyway, she didn't have any trouble with changing between. Some babies can get lazy as Annie said but Hannah did prefer the 'real deal'. Only thing I should have done was got DH to practise feeding her the bottle before he was left with her - she was only used to taking it off me. At 6-9mos she 'fasted' until my return and that was the end of the EBM

jack's first bottle was at 3 1/2mths, he took it fine so we gave him EBM on and off. at about 5mths he started to refuse it, no matter what teat or who it was giving it to him. then a couple of months later we tried him again and it was like there had never been a problem

charli had a bottle at 3weeks (i think) and from about 10-12 weeks she had was having a top up of formula every night before bed.

both were fully BF

Maya took a bottle at 3 weeks when I was in hospital with mastitis, then I didn't offer it again til 9 weeks and she flatly refused it and continued to until she was 9 months old.
The gremlins were bottle fed EBM from 6 days and alternated fairly easily between the breast and the bottle, my issues with feeding were more with tandem feeding than them not feeding well.