Pat -

I guess what I would do would really depend on what the mom wanted to do.
Yes, if she's willing to go through all the work of expressing those few
drops, I sure would feed it to the baby! With as much excitement as if it
were 30 ccs! BUT, I would ensure that mom was aware that those drops weren't
the whole feeding - call it "dessert first" or something.

But the bigger picture, given what you've told us - I just don't know, to be
honest. I guess it's a situation for using all your skills of communication
to try to divine what's going on. My hunch is that this mom needs some care
herself, and that the baby might be well-served by helping mom "bottle feed
like a BF mother", as you put it. Remember rule #1: feed the baby.

Does this mom need "permission" to not go through all these rigours to try
to get BFing going? If you sense that she does, maybe you should shift your
efforts to helping her with some of the other skills of nurturance and
parenting. It sounds to me like she very much needs to know that she's doing
"the right thing"; it may be that in this case the right thing is getting
free of a lot of burdens, including maybe the g***t word. But what do I
know?

Trust your instincts, Pat!

Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC Ithaca NY (snowbound - no school)