6 mo started rejecting the breast

[tinkerbug]

DS is (almost) 6 months old. He has been exclusively BF from birth, and also takes the odd bottle of expressed breast milk to give me a break.

Recently he has started getting harder and harder to feed. He is fine at bedtime, in the night and in the morning and feeds no problem, it is the daytime I'm having issues with. For some reason, he just will not take the breast. He is obviously hungry but when I try to feed him he SCREAMS! Then follows about 25 mins of me trying, him crying and usually DH taking him. Yesterday we managed to coax him to feed (it took about an hour and lots of distraction to get him on the boob) Today he completely refused it whatever we tried and got himself in a right old state. So I ended up expressing and he took that and gulped the whole lot down.

We started weaning a couple of weeks ago but he's not having much - a couple of teaspoons of fruit puree for breakfast, very teeny amount of veg puree for lunch and then a few teaspoons of baby rice and fruit puree for tea - so I don't think this is the cause.

Anybody have any similar experiences? Anybody got any ideas / tips?

DD1 was like this from about 3 months. I persevered giving her bottles of expressed milk at least twice a day until 7 months when she refused even the morning feed which she had always been calm for. I felt I spent my whole life expressing and reluctanatly moved onto formula. I tried everything but she wore me down!
Sorry I don't have any solutions but want to wish you luck. The thing that got to me most was the feeling I was on my own and nobody understood so wanted to reply so you didn't feel on your own! hope someone has good advice for you and good luck.

When you feed him, is he being distracted by things happening around him. It sounds to me that he is alert and eager to learn and wants to see whats going on around him, he doesnt want the breast in the way!! Or he might not be hungry, maybe the food you are weaning him on is filling him up?

My almost 9 mo son has the odd strop like this for a day or two. Sometimes I can think of a reason (teeth or my trying too hard to feed him) and sometimes it seems totally random. It's always returned to normal for us, though I still find it very upsetting. Tears when I thought I was long past this!

I hope things are better today.

try feeding in dark! close bedroom curtains and get into bed.

Prettyone, yes, he is always getting distracted, to the point that he won't feed at all when we are out - there's far more interesting things to do - then he gets in a strop because he's hungry and still won't eat! Even at home he gets distracted by anything, eg the TV, DH talking....the other day we were lying on the bed in silence with the curtains closed and he broke off from feeding because a bird tweeted outside the window...:)

ZM, yes, things are slightly better today, he did feed before his nap at lunchtime, although it was in several goes as he kept trying to watch the TV, which I had switched off! Have discovered we have less problems with distractions when he is eating his solids, probably because he can look around at the same time whereas with BF all he can see is boob!

MNITA, thanks for the support, nice to know I'm not alone.

And MNWL, I already do this but thanks anyway!