5 months - sudden problem when feeding

[dartiss]

Hi all,

This is my first post, so please be gentle. And I'm a dad rather than a mum

My daughter - nearly 5 months now - has made a sudden change in her feeding habits.

For the last few days, when feeding her, mainly later in the day, she starts getting quite distressed about it. She's hungry and does take it in the end, but not without a lot of crying. The last feed before bedtime is particularly bad and now involves one of us having to hold her whilst the other feeds - otherwise as soon as you sit down with her she gets really, really upset.

Otherwise all is fine with her - she doesn't appear to be windy or have a temperature. And after she's had the milk, she's happy again.

Any thoughts on what this could be? Could it be a sign that she's needing to start weaning?

David.

Is she teething?

how is she napping? Is she getting overtired by the end of the day and crying because of it?

I am assuming this is bottle feeding? It could be the flow of the nipple. When DS (4 months) is really tired a faster flowing nipple (i.e. a 2 or a variflow) stresses him out, but if I use a 1 he eats just fine.

Well, I'm not sure if she's teething. The Health Visitor last Friday said not, but she's constantly got her first in her mouth and dribbling a lot. If I put my finger in her mouth she chomps down on it. However, there's nothing gum-wise different.

Napping... fine. Kind of. She likes lots of sleep and if she misses out a sleep she gets niggly really quickly. However, just as long as she gets a quick power nap before her bedtime feed (I normally take her out in the pram) she's normally fine.

Teat... she has the opposite problem. We had size 1 teats and she was getting frustrated at night because she couldn't get enough. We moved to 2 and she's fine. But maybe I'll try a size 1 to see if it slows her down a little.

David.

My DD did the same at about 5 months, sadly we never found out what it was - giving her a small ose of calpol half an hour before the bottle worked for about a week (tried incase was teething!), but then stopped working again, it was almost as if she would rather do anything other than drink her milk! it carried on almost a month and the only way we could feed her in the end was to walk around with her while feeding her or having the telly on/read a book to try and keep her distracted, it was a nightmare but as with all these things a phase (i hated people saying that but they were right!)
good luck xxx

My 5 month old does this too. It's completely random, and I have no idea why he does it. It's so frustrating. Usually I try my best to distract him, like fairimum say's.. we sometimes walk around with him whilst trying to feed him. If it's during the day I occasionally just give up, and usually he'll have his next feed with no problem because he's hungry.

Morning!

Yes, it happened again last night. She fed fine during the day but when it came to bedtime she got upset as soon as the bottle went near her - she didn't even drink any before she started. She eventually got horrendously upset and it took ages to calm her down.

However, yes, feeding her whilst standing up does appear to work. Once she's calmed down.

David.

Ok. Weird one today. All was well until her third feed when she got upset when there was still about 2 floz of feed left. My wife left it but when it came to her next feed she didn't want it all. But she wasn't upset - simply pushing it away.

So, we got to bed time and it was the same once more. This time as soon as we got into the bedroom she got upset. After some time of hysterical crying she calmed enough that she would feed as she was held.

Does anybody suspect that this could be a weaning problem? Or rather, suggesting that she's wanting weaning (20 weeks, nothing started yet)?

David.

I think your best bet is to ring the Health visitor tomorrow. I really don't think that there is anything wrong with her, like I said, my DS did exactly the same thing (still does occasionally). But I know that it is frustrating, I'm sure missing the odd feed now and again won't do any damage. If I was in your situation, I wouldn't worry, but I would ring the Health visitor for reassurance/advice. As for weaning, well the guidelines say 6 months, but for me, I'd be happy to give a little baby rice at 5 months, again, check with your Health visitor.