Baby won't drink Neocate

[theaevie]

My 12 week dd3 has been put onto Neocate due to milk allergy, however she appears to hate the taste. Can I add anything to the formula to improve the taste and make it more palatable?

my daughter also has dairy allergy, her gp spoke to a peadiatric dietician about which was the best milk for her to have, he was advised soya, she was on sma before and went on to soya sma which apparently has the same taste as other sma, is your dd able to have soya instead? it would be worth going back to whoever prescribed it and asking to try something else, might be a bit dodgy to add anything to it. good luck.

I did try the Soya formula, but she was starting to react to that also.

A nurse at my GP surgery suggested adding brown sugar to the formula but to me that seemed pretty drastic.

At the moment I am trying to give her neocate and normal aptamil mixed together to get her used to the taste gradually but as soon as she tastes the combination she rejects the bottle.

your right, brown sugar does sound a bit drastic, brown sugar has a laxative effect on babies so that in itself could cause problems.

you could re-post this in 'breast and bottlefeeding' topic? may get more replies.

We were advised by the dietician tp put nesquick in and gradually reduce the3 amount until there's none.

theaevie,
How much neocate are you putting into the aptamil? I would continue down this route but take it very slowly. At 12 weeks it should still be possible to get acceptance i would have thought(i think it can get increasingly hard from this age onwards though). My DD is still on Neocate at 2.5yrs (started at abut the same age) and its the only 'milk' she will touch believe it or not - and i agree its hideous stuff but of course she doesn't know any different.

As far as i can remember it is slightly better tasting than Nutramigen (which is the other one they give, but not as good and can still cause reactions).

alice

We used sma lf which IMO tastes more like normal formula than neocate, we tried neocate once and the smell made me feel ill.

My 9wks old Baby has been prescribed Neocate due to reaction to cows milk, but she cries when am feeding her with this. Pls what can I do, because this is the 4th milk and I dont want to change it again.

Hi Annefecrys,
I feel for you as I am going through the same. My DS who is now 29 weeks and who apparently suffers fro, multiple food protein allergies has been refusing the milk since about 2 months ago despite us starting him on it from 11 weeks. We even got a paediatric dietician who witnessed a milk feed and how hard he fought against it to confirm that in her experience it was a palatability problem. She consulted with our paediatrician and they suggested we reintroduce soy through the soy formula for one milk feed a day but my little one refuses it too. No surprise as it smells and tastes as bad. My advice is that at 9 weeks your best bet is to persevere. When we started, my husband and I agreed that as long as we didn't give the baby a choice, he would drink it. Which he did. Though the problem mentioned above arose when we started solids. We are still trying to resolve this issue and will be seeing our paediatrician next week to discuss more as he is certainly not getting enough of the formula into him at his age. Happy to share with you any results from our discussion with the paediatrician if you feel it would help. Sorry you are going through this as well x

Perseverance I'm afraid! You're doing the right thing as Neocate is the right formula for your baby. Soya formula is definitely NOT advisable, especially given how young your baby is. You need to be patient and keep at it. Mixing it with the Aptamil is a good way to go even if you have to start with just an ounce of Neocate and build up gradually from there. I know that others have mixed it with some Nesquick to mask the taste and then gradually reducing the amount of Nesquick until they'll accept it straight.

When LO wouldn't accept neutramigen we tried aptamil pepti and he took it no problem.

It's not amino acid based but hydrogenated, got rid of the majority of LOs symptoms within a couple of days!

It tastes and smells a million times better!

I have just been prescribed Neocate and am currently breastfeeding.

Not sure how I am going to get 8 month old to drink it but the dietitian told me to try vanilla extract if he wouldn't take it! And in my local health food shop they said a little bit of agave syrup. Has anyone tried these??

I breastfed whilst on the exclusion diet for as long as possible because DS wouldn't take neocate. Finally getting DS to take neocate was a nightmare, but became easier once he wanted to watch TV - I'd just pause the picture until he started drinking again.

It was pretty grim for a few months, but has been worth it as he is still having to drink it years later (and yes we do slip a bit of sugar into it too.)

We went on neocate from breastfeeding - As it tastes so awful, and the alternative was DS not drinking milk of any description at all, we opted for a gradual introduction over about two weeks. I worked out a sliding scale ratio of expressed breast milk to neocate eg 1 part neocate to 7 parts neocate, whEn he accepted that 2 parts neocate to 6 parts neocate. It was a slog and a faff as I had to both express and then make up the neocate. But it was worth it, as he'd originally been so horrified by the taste of the neocate, he refused any bottle at all. So in week to 2 weeks we had it sorted.