Owwww how to stop the biting?!

[babybouncer]

My 9mo seems to be cutting down on her feeds during the day and night, and now tells me she's had enough by biting. She has a couple of bottles of formula already and I'm moving to fully ff, but in the mean time - how can I persuade her not to bite?

At nine months you break the seal with your finger in the corner of her mouth and plonk her on the floor saying no very firmly.

You pick her up just before she cries and continue feeding her.

If she persists end the feed, 9 month olds eat yoghurt and probably drink juice. Missing a feed won't do great harm.

Smaller babies can, sometimes be stopped butting by pulling them hard into you so they can't breath for a moment. They then let go and latch on nicely. Older DCs have far too much head control and just wriggle fight and bite harder.

I always say 'no' and stop feeding her, but I think now its just become her signal to end the feed - if I put her back on, she just bites again.

Oh if she bites at the end of a feed and she's falling asleep you just have to feel when she relaxes and pop a finger in the corner of her mouth.

I think bitting then is a reflex as they feel themselves slipping off.

DD2 learnt not to bite normally, but did as she dozed off. I had to remember not to concentrate to much on the TV. (DD2 fed to sleep for many years, subtitles are wonderful things).

Saying no didn't work for me as this showed my DD that her actions were causing a reaction. I detached her at the first sign of biting by pushing her head gently into the breast so that she couldn't breathe. Then I said nothing and put her down or put her in her cot and walked away for a few minutes and then came back and resumed the feed. If she bit me again, then I repeated the above.

I found that nothing worked apart from zero tolerance to it. I tried the no approach for weeks and it didn't work. After a day and half of the "silent treatment", she stopped biting for good!