Help Needed

[Bazoo23]

I ebf my daughter until 24 weeks and planned to start reducing from then. She is now 28 weeks and although she takes a bottle of ebm no problem (practically snatches it!) she will not drink formula at all.

At the minute I bf first thing, ebm bottle at 11am, ebm bottle at 3pm then bf at bedtime.

She doesnt really seem bothered about milk during the day shes more interested in her food but takes the bottle enthusiastically when it appears!

However Im sick of expressing and just want to stop all of it now. Please no comments urging me to continue Ive had enough and am even beginning to wish Id never started now when I was so proud to reach 6 months.

How can I get her to take formula? The minute she realises what shes drinking isnt ebm she has a full scale meltdown. HELP!!

How about using formula in her food to get her used to the taste? Or try a different formula if you haven't already?

Could you mix bm and formula and gradually reduce the amount of bm til its all formula?
Start off mainly bm so she can still taste it and then add more and more formula so its a gradual switch.
I don't know if you are supposed to so that tho...(disclaimer!)

no expert but have you tried giving her EBM with a small amount of formula in? if she'll take that you could then increase the proportion of formula by a bit each time, it might not be such an obvious change for her that way. clearly she loves the good stuff!

oops x-post with purple - great minds...

I tried lots of different formula brands but that was about a month ago when she was still rejecting the bottle so literally got nowhere. Maybe worth trying a few again now shes happy to take bottles...She absolutely HATES SMA, is a tiny bit better with Cow and Gate but not much - is Hipp any good? Got a coupon in the post for it :-)
Today, I expressed 3oz of bm and bottle fed her with that. She obviously protested when I took the empty bottle away so quickly switched it for a prepared bottle of 2oz formula and 2oz bm. She took this no problem. is this a strategy worth continuing with do you think?

So sorry for the epic post

My (mainly) EBF DS took Hipp organic from DH when I was away and they ran out of ebm. You could give it a go.
I would also recommend getting someone else to do it whilst you are out. I would hazard a guess that if your LO can see you they can smell your milk. It would drive me crazy to be offered just grape juice when I could smell wine... (No it is not the same but its the only analogy I could think of !)

Aptamil was good for my two when we switched to formula

My boss' wife gets patents for medicines. She recommended Aptamil as the formula was most like breast milk. I used that with all 3 of mine, although no-one else I knew used it.

Like others have said, mix them and gradually increase the formula content. Also try a few different brands (small cartons). They do taste quite different - mine wouldn't touch aptamil but demolished sma.

hi Bazoo - I'd say yes if she was happy with the mix of BM and formula then try that again, perhaps without just EBM first and later with more formula and less BM in the mix.

in response to purple's earlier post, as I understand it, it's fine to mix as long as anything left is discarded as formula would be after a certain time (from memory I think 2 hrs after making up the bottle).

hope it continues to work OP.