Combination feeding bottle refusla

[ebg93]

Hello everyone,
I’m after some help and advise. My little girl has been bottle refusing for a few weeks but will take an oz from dad then stops. In the day, she downright refuses from me.
we have combination fed from day one and she took to the bottle fine. At around 8 weeks old she suddenly fussed at the bottle (mam ones) and only wanted the breast. It was when she started to feed less at night.
We've tried different bottles (MAM and tommee tippee), different teets with different flows. We have used the Aldi formula from day one so the formula isn’t different. I want to start expressing and get her off the breast. Does anyone have any others ideas that we could try?
She gets hysterical when we try and give her a bottle now in the day and almost refusing at all feeds.
Thank you in Advance if you do reply to this!
One deflated mumma x

What age is she?

My eldest DD was similar. I can't remember the timing now but would do breast and bottle while v little and then a switch flipped and it was breast or nothing. We couldn't work out how to flip it back so we just gave up on the bottles and she got breastfed for the rest of the time.

Thank you so much for responding! We have been taking it in turns to feed her at night and would just swap each time so we would get some chunk of sleep each.
she’s about to turn three months old but the fussiness started around two months old.

Hello,
Did you get to the bottom of the issue with the bottle refusal?
We are in a very similar situation - our 8 weeks old girl suddenly stopped willing to be fed with a bottle. We mainly breastfeed her, but once a day we give her a bottle of expressed milk. She was very happy to switch between breast and bottle until 2 days ago when she suddenly stopped accepting the bottle.
Thanks in advance.

Hi,

I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through this as well. It’s so stressful.

We went to exclusive breastfeeding for a while and then just kept offering the bottle to which she refused. The books I read were all saying get the root cause of the problem or the trigger but we couldn’t work it out.

One mum suggested I tried lansinoh bottles and she did stop spitting them out but she wasn’t taking anything just playing with it. Another mum suggested trying kendamil forumla mixed with expressed milk. Still didn’t work. People said to drop a bit of vanilla extract in as it makes expressed milk sweeter. There is a horomone some women produce too much off and it can make expressed milk smell fishy or taste sour to babies. To test it they say to leave some of your milk out for 30 mins and see if you notice a smell.

This is not a popular opinion but a nurse I saw when she had her 16 week jabs said that you just need to be stronger than they are. They will often choose breastfeeding as it keeps them so close to us. We had a bad day where we only offered her bottles and she would take an oz at a time. She is on bottles in the daytime now and breastfed during her night feed. The hunger takes over the choice factor. She also likes her milk slighter warmer than body temperature and will gag on cooler ones.

People also said once you start introducing them to solids at six months they’re more likely to take the bottle but I didn’t want to wait until six months. I’ve found it really limiting as I haven’t been to anywhere solo for four months now. We’re just about getting there.

I hope you find a way to make it work. Let me know how you get on. X

Thank you so much for all the tips and information you shared with me.

I will try the things you suggested and hopefully we get back to having a happy baby willing to take the bottle again 🤞

Many Thanks!