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I was a little possessive in that i didnt want my MIL and mom to always have the baby when they were staying with us. i think things will change once you have the baby, but i understand wanting time in the beginning to bond.

Seriously though, i disagree with the whole nipple confusion bit. My LO had the bottle when we supplemented with formula in the beginning, and she still preferred the boob. Many friends regret not introducing the bottle early on because now at 3 -4 months they will refuse the bottle! Babies will always prefer the boob snd i dont think 1 bottle a day will hurt...plus it will allow your husband to bond with the baby.

I'm only possessive of her with people I don't like (some of DH's family). I bought bottles just in case, I needed to get out of the house by myself by 3-4 weeks pp. I really don't think nipple confusion is a real thing! DD likes breastfeeding over bottles any day and actually rejects the bottle often.

I was not possessive. I have four kids and have had very different birth/bring baby home experiences. Each one of them I am equally bonded to and nothing could change that likewise they are very clearly bonded to me as their mother.

My oldest was adopted I brought him home from the hospital at four days and he was bottle feed.

I was separated for a few hours from my twins because my blood pressure tanked in the middle of my c section and they had to give me some heavy duty drugs so I needed to recover. After that they were breastfeed with supplemented bottles

My daughter I had in recovery with me right after she was cleaned and weighed. Se has been exclusively breastfeed and has never had a bottle at 13 months.

Each one is very different and very much bonded. We also had lots of visitors and I didn't mind at all.

In the end you will do what you want and what you feel is best for your family. but trust me no matter what happens or who is around you and your husband will absolutely bond with your baby and your baby will bond with you. No matter how many people held my children they always knew who mommy was.

I'll echo pps on having bottles. We had problems with bf while waiting for my milk to come in, the first couple days and without pumped bottles I would have had a breakdown. Plus we found out early on my daughter has vitamin deficiency and initially had to take a supplement in her bottle. Not meant to worry you, because honestly now at 6 months my babe will only take boob! I wish she would at least take 1 bottle so my hubby could help with night wakings! We even gave her pacifiers in the beginning and had no issue. As for the passing her around, i always did and still do, but she definitely prefers to be with me and I know we have a very strong bond! But I totally understand wanting to get as much time bonding as you can, I already miss those precious newborn days, holding cuddling and watch them sleep, so sweet but so short! Enjoy every single second!

My mom and dad could only stay for a week and I wish they could have stayed much longer. MIL came for a month. I do think I was possessive to some extent. Letting people hold him for a couple of minutes didn't bother me though.

I didn't plan to go to work so I never really pursued pumping or bottles. I had some but really never used them. DS hated them and pacifiers and since it wasn't necessary I didn't push it. My SIL has two daughters and she works. The older one she stayed home with for a while and she had no problem switching back and forth from boob to bottle. With her second she went back to work at like 5 weeks and she is now rejecting the boob for the bottle. I think it just depends on the situation and the child. I do think that if a baby is in daycare and the bottle is the only source of nourishment they will eventually take it. For SAHMs it's less likely they will take it unless the bottle is introduced early.

It would be a real bummer if LO refused to take an artificial nipple once you went back to work. That would be a nightmare for you, your baby, and the daycare provider! My LO is six months old and STILL refuses a bottle. It is really hard. Highly rrecommend introducing one earlier so you do not run into this.

And about the possessive thing, I totally understand that. I didn't like passing my baby around at first. I still don't (although I do it anyway so family can enjoy her).

I was zero possessive when LO was a newborn.... I spent half the day with him attached to my boob, so I was more than happy to pass him off to others!
(Though now I wish I'd done a little less of that and gotten to enjoy more of his non-feeding, non-fussy periods... he spent SO much time BFing that pretty much whenever he wasn't eating, I handed him off to someone else because I really needed those breaks, but it also meant that I never got to just enjoy him. Oh well).
I got a lot more possessive of him starting around 6-7 months, when he actually got fun to be around.
It's your call re: using bottles at all before going back to work (our lactation consultant told us to do a bottle a day from the very beginning, and it worked well for us), but I just wanted to say that even if you don't expect to give any bottles, I'd really suggest starting to pump as early as possible to build up your supply. I started pumping right away (I'd pump a little bit after several feedings throughout the day), and by the time I went back to work I had a pretty nice freezer stash, and my boobs were used to producing extra so I had really productive pumping sessions at work.

I'm also a hover mom. The first few weeks I really didn't love having people over to hold her nonstop and wanted to enjoy as much of the early days as I could. Now that she's 7 weeks I'm a little better but still not leaving her for a long time.

She's had a pacifier since the first week as well as a bottle of expressed milk. I don't give her a bottle with any regularity, only if I happened to have pumped because she slept through a feed. She goes from paci to bottle to breast without any issues whatsoever.

I think it's good to have a plan when thinking about life with a newborn though, as others have said, a lot of times baby has his/her own plan and it's often the opposite of what we have decided on.

I was 100% certain that breastfeeding would work for us and it didn't. Without going into too many details, my supply was terribly low and constant pumping did nothing to help it. So, at 2.5 months I had to switch to formula. I hope it's different from you and it seems likely that it will be (given that I know so few people who have this issue), but just know that no matter how it works out, you and your husband will do what's best for your LO.

As for being attached to LO, the early days (for me) were a blur of constant breastfeeding, so I was more than happy to hand her off to my mother or MIL. Like @Lozza said, now that she's older and more fun, I'm finding it more difficult!

I'm not possessive exactly but I wouldn't pass my 1week old around to a bunch of coworkers! I'd be afraid he would catch something. I did let some family visit and took him out in public but wouldn't have wanted people other than family touching him.

As far as BF'ing, I did EBF until he wasn't gaining well. Then I added supplemental pumped milk by bottle at around 2 weeks. I gave him a little after he breastfed. My advice would be to go ahead and pump from early on to get your supply up, even if you save it for later. It takes a while to build a stash when you are EBF'ing. If you have your heart set on breastmilk only, it's nice to have a stash so it is less stressful when you go back to work if you have a little trouble incorporating pumping into your schedule. It took me 6 weeks to build a 75 oz stash before I returned to work when he was 8 weeks old.

As far as introducing a bottle, we use the Medela Calma and have had no issues.

I was not and am not possessive. Holding babies makes so many people happy, and from the start LO has loved seeing new faces (especially smiling ones!) so I feel like it's a win-win. It makes me happy to see people happy to interact with my baby; and it makes LO happy to see lots of smiling happy faces cooing at her.

I brought her into my work within her first month and we had a lot of visitors; if they wanted to hold LO, I'd let them.