Stubborn bottle rejector - 4 weeks til back at work - HELP

[blumberg]

My friend - (internetless) is going back to work in 4 weeks and has been trying to get ds to take bottle for months. Though has occasionally taken it previously has been absolutely solidly refusing for weeks now. Has tried to go cold turkey with result of serious clamping shut of mouth and lots of stress for everyone involved!! Is it possible to go back to work and only feed in morning and evening? baby is six months old and healthy! Any advice

MY DD bow 5, would not take a bottle. I bought every type of bottle and every teat known to mankind. My friend in the US was even sending me stuff to try! In the end I went back to work at 8 months. She had a b/f in the morning, would only take water (not milk!) from a cup during the day and had a big b/f around 6pm when I got in and then a bed time b/f at 9ish.

I also expressed a bit of milk, 8ozs or so, a day to mix with food during the day. Had to do it in the loos at work - not a happy memory

I think they are much more adaptable than we give them credit for. Having said that my mum and mil were not at all happy!!!!!

My brother couldn't use a bottle when a baby and mum used to give him milk from a cup (not a beaker). Maybe consider trying one of those Doidy cups with the tilted rims; from the Bickiepegs website . My DD managed to use one of these with help for water and then juice from about 3 months.

At 6 months I would forget the bottle and persevere with feeder cup. Yes it is possible to go back to work and feed in the morning and evening. It is also possible to feed more often on days off. If your friend wants to persevere with the bottle then put something else in it like juice. Sometimes babies reject milk from a bottle and most (but not all) reject water. Try and reassure her that her baby will not starve and will drink when really thirsty.

At seven months, your friend doesn't need to feel the baby has to have milk in the day - she can feed when she is with him - extra at weekends, and if she does this she may be uncomfortable enough to have to express in the day - and he can have sloppy solids in the day and maybe learn to use a cup. Honestly, it is not worth teaching a baby of this age to use a bottle. She can get more infomation if she calls the NCT enquiry line 0870 444 8707 and asks to be sent a copy of the factsheet on Bottles for Breastfed Babies.

Mears, Tiktok et al what would your advice be for a 5mth old in the same boat. I'm not returning to work yet but would like the freedom of occasionally having more than a few hours away from DS - however I haven't even started weaning him yet.

DS had a bottle from a few weeks old once a day in an effort to prevent this, but on the advice of my HV I started b/fing at the 10pm feed which was when he was bottlefed - as he has only ever taken a few ozs from a bottle she thought he would take more from me and sleep through ha ha - and now he is seeemingly totally out of the habit after a few weeks of no bottles!

When I returned to work I tried a bottle the day before I went. Baby took it and that was that. I would go to work leaving milk with the expectation that the baby would take it if hungry and they always did. It wasn't my problem if they didn't was my philosophy

Thanks Mears, I'll try him again - would you wait til hes really hungry? MIL tried it with him thios am when I went out - no joy.....

Real sympathies on this. My DS absolutely refused milk (XBM or later formula) from a bottle, even tho' we followed all the advice about introducing one. Everyone said that if he was hungry, he would drink, but when I started to pick him up from nursery weak and tired from having had no more than 2.5 ounces all day, I doubted this theory. (BTW he showed no signs of being unhappy at nursery; was giggly and cuddly with staff, never cried and I used to turn up unexpectedly to check that this was his all-day pattern) He b/f like mad all night, and once he went on to solids, which he would eat happily at nursery, we mixed XBM into all his food, babyrice and pureed veg.
Sorry if this is not encouraging...the mixing food into solids was a good solution, and anyway, once he was eating some solids, then that kept him fed during the day, but it was the most difficult period of our lives with DS, and both myself and DP desparately regret that we didn't just take on a huge debt and extend my maternity leave.
I hope you DO find a solution, I think that perhaps had we been more routine-orientated than we were then that might have helped, and maybe I should have been more ruthless about not letting him feed 3-4 times a night. There was a limit to how far I felt able to get into that kind of stand-off with a baby, tho!
Don't mean to be negative...just don't start thinking it's your fault if trying different gadgets doesn't work.

I don't know why it's thought a good idea to wait until a baby is absolutely starving to 'make' them take a bottle...I suppose it must work some of the time, but the opposite is more true....you are asking the baby to learn a new skill, and he is not likely to learn it if he is hungry, frazzled, and very very cross. None of us learn anything well when we are in that state. The baby doesn't even know the bottle will assuage his hunger.

Instead, choose a time when the baby is happy and relaxed, and then try. It's no good if he is already 'anti' bottle. Wait a few days or even more so he forgets.

The NCT factsheet I mentioned is excellent.

Pidge did a really good post on this, which I'm afraid I'm not up to finding at the moment (end of the week and I'm KNACKERED) but is worth checking out.

My dd2 has got the hang of bottles, and it's fab.

Tiktok, that makes SO much sense...
Wish I had known about MN at the time we were in such a state!
(tho' we did try when he was fed and relaxed, most of the time)

nothing new to add, but like blu tried "everything" with dd; after feed before feed, different persons, different times, etc. However when 6 months old could mix EBM with solids so had no further problems. Blumberg, as your friend's ds is 6 months she should be allright. Had similar but less severe problem with ds (did take beaker) and learned from it not too worry too much about it (easier said then done)

I totally agree with Tiktok here that it's ridiculous to try to get a baby to take a bottle when they're hungry and fed up. Of course they don't understand it will ease hunger if they're used to a human breast. As for me, my daughter was anti all bottles regardless of what they contained and who gave them to her until she herself was ready which was around 10 months old and then suddenly it seemed to make sense to her. Quite miraculously. But generally tips I found useful were to make the bottle feeds as different as possible to breast feeds so she didn't become too confused. She had bottles in her bouncy chair, I made it fun, tickling her lips with the teat and pretending to drink from the bottle myself.

I have a theory though about babies who will not take bottles. Usually they are continually forced to take something they do not want, often by people who are babysitting and want the satisfaction of getting the baby to take a bottle. I have not come across a baby who will not take some milk out of a bottle when I have had them. Different things to try are - milk pretty warm teat heated, walking withbaby facing away from you, baby held against skin etc. It does not stress me to have an exclusively B/F baby. If the carer gets uptight, so does the baby. Letting the baby play with a bottle in a bouncy chair is also a good idea. My sister had to give up B/F because of medication for P/N depression and her baby refused bottles initially ( that was questionable in itself but was 10 years ago). Soon changed when that was the only way to get milk. She took her first bottle feed when given it facing away from me and walking round the room. I think my babies all took bottles because I just did not get stressed over it. Calm mum, calm baby

Can you tell by my tone that I have had a couple of glasses of wine - first for a few days?

i was in the exact same situation as you, i was supposed to go back to work when my dd was 5 months, i was breastfeeding and kind of wanted to stop. i was only returning 2 days a week. for two weeks my mother tried to look after her anf feed her with bottles but she refused and one of the days she had to drive all the way to into town (london) because my dd was in such a state crying that my mum was worried so i fed her at work and had to take a month unpaid leave to sort the feeding out. my dd is so stubborn so i gave her a break of a couple a weeks so she would forget the ordeal then when i tried againb with breast milk, i just held the bottle in my hand near her whilst walking around and she always does, she just reached out and popped it in her mouth!!! i had gone through every teat and bottle and the teats that she likes are superdrug latex fast flow - 3 for 95P... typical! they are really soft so i guess mjore breastlike as the avent are quite hard....., anyway at first i would keep the milk i expressed in the night and give my mother that plus formula milk. she always drank the breast milk at first and refused the formula. but over the weeks solids where introduced so they got her through the day until i arrived at 7 like 'jordan'. i did not keep the milk i expressed at work - too much hassle. she is almost 8 months now and i have cut her milk feeds to 4 a day, her second feed is formula milk in a bottle. when i work she has two formula bottles. i am slowly trying to drop a feed every other week! everyone told me to give up trying with the bottle and just use a beaker but i thought a beaker was not very cosy and close feeding so i perserverd and it has paid off. stick in there and maybe try the superdrug teats as they really are soft. try not make it too much of an issue, give it a break for a week and try again. sit down and hol dbaby on your lap with some nice music playing, after a minute or two hold the bottle on your lap infront of them and i bet they will pop it in their mouth, gently tip it up to help them suck!!! fingers crossed, i know how stressful itr is, i had many tears!!! also try get th emilk as hot as possible, hotter than your own breast milk! :0

my dd can drink (although I use a boots training spout - worth a try) - however at nursery she doesn't take much. Thursday she had 3oz in all and she was quite happy (she does feed all night tho' lol) - the Heinz cup is also quite popular, even if she just takes water to keep her frok being dehydrated

Hi blumberg, I haven't read all the responses here, but I just wanted to ask, has your friend spoken to whoever is going to be looking after her ds? Before I went back to work I was in a panic for exactly the same reason. My childminder was very reassuring - she said that if he was hungry enough, he would take a bottle from her, and she had never had problems before. This was enough to make me less stressed about the whole situation. In fact we managed to get ds's first bottle down him just a few days before he was due to go to the childminder for the first time.

Thanks all for all the tips and advice, we have tried giving DS an empty bottle today to play with and he did at least get to the stage where he was happy to have it in his mouth to chew on - so we are making progress.

Thing is, I'm not going back to work till at least after xmas (so not as urgent a prob as your friend Blumberg) by which time he will be weaned and can as you rightly point out have some EBM mixed with solids - or may even take a cup.

It really was only for the (once every couple of months) occasions where DH and I get the chance of a night out and not wanting to have to rush back for the 10.30 feed. Still given the frequency of these nights out, he'll probably be weaned by the next one !

Have only scanned this really quickly (must actually do some work!) - but shucks thanks motherinferior for your comment. The thread she refers to is : here :

Perseverance and calm definitely the key - hard as it is - we went through terrible woes over this, but dd did get there in the end.

Good luck.

I had this problem with both of my ds's. Ds1 really wasn't properly taking a bottle when he started at nursery. (even though we'd tried everything!) Luckily my nursery were very positive about this, & said he'd be fine when I wasn't there etc. He was! Within days of him starting at nursery he was happily drinking from bottles.

Ds2 was nearly as stubborn! Thanks to some advice from this site I tried the Avent softspout, without the valve in it, which did come out very fast, but got him used to the idea of a bottle (he wouldn't take any sort of teat - just played around with them in his mouth). When he started sucking on it, I then put the valve back in. This took a couple of weeks, but did work, just in time for him to start nursery.