Refusing the bottle

[RachelGough]

My DD is 18 w/o and has ben EBF since birth. She now will not the bottle. I am going back to work soon and I am really starting to panic. I have searched for advice online and nothing Ihave tried so ar has worked. I have tried giving her the bottle myself, my DH has tried, my mum has tried. I have gone out of the oom so she isn't distracted. I have tried numerous teats. I have tried differnet positions and different times of day. I have tried feeding her when she is very hungry and when she isn't hungry and everything in between. I have coaxed and soothed till I'm blue in the face. I have tried syringe feeding o she gets used to the idea that milk doesn't always come from the breast but that didn't work either. I'm so desperate.

It's not just about going back to work. I have been afraid to leave her because she won't take the bottle. In four months haven't been apart from her for more than half an hour whilst her dad pushes her around the street in her pram. Because it has been so long, we both now have sepration anxiety. I am terrified of leaving her and she fusses if I go out of the room. Going back to work the way things are will be like throwing her in at the deep end. After four months of having Mummy all to herself she will uddenly have to go all day without me. Obviously going back to work is a stressful and difficult time anyway and his prolem is everything so much worse.

I can't get a break or spend any time for myself and I am suffering with quite bad PND. None of this is helping.

I honestly don't know what else to try. Everyone is telling me to go cold turkey and that she will take the bottle when she is hungry enough but I am very reluctant to starve her into submission. The thought of it makes me feel sick. Somehow I have to get her on the bottle. My elationship is suffering and my DH feels left out becuse he can't feed and bond with her.

I need help. Any ideas?

Rachel

my friend has recently had this problem with her dd2, she was weaning at the same time
her dd went nealry a full day without milk (but had nutrients from food) before taking the bottle, have you tried a sippy cup?
my ds did take a bottle of expressed milk and then stopped, i think he would just make up for it at the next feed

Rachel, first of all, don't panic! She will not allow herself to starve. My ds3 was like this. Gave me the shock of my life because ds1 and ds2 happily switched between breast and bottle and I had put it down to my wonderful parenting and expert choice in bottles. Same bottles, different baby, total refusal from ds3!

I bought loads of different types of bottles, I had a cupboard full of them! Now the ones that he eventually took were playtex with a latex teat and the drop in liners. these with these teats. However some MNers with the same problem found that their baby took cheapo bottles with a latex teat instead so might be worth trying that?

I found that the following worked. Waiting till around halfway between feeds so that he wasn't particularly hungry. Then holding him facing away from me, bottle in mouth while walking around and singing!

Now, if you are giving her expressed breastmilk, check that you don't have a lipase problem. This is a problem that some women have which is overproduction of lipase which turns the mild soapy. It's safe for them to drink but tastes awful! Taste your milk after it has been in the fridge or freezer for a while. If it tastes terrible then you have lipase issues, which is a PITA as it means you have to scald your milk before freezing it. Mine was like this when frozen but fine when fresh but for some reason, only when I had ds3! With the others I never had a problem, even ds4 who came later and dd.

In the end before I went back to work, my Mum took him for a day and he took 4 bottles for her.

But he was never a lover of the bottle, was on solids by the time he started nursery and once he had solids, rarely actually drank the milk. I used to use the breastmilk to put in his food to make sure he was getting enough!

Another thing that people have mentioned success with is a doidy cup rather than a bottle, worth a try?

I have just moved my 19 week old onto a bottle - I had tried to give him a bottle of EBM once a day over the course of a week to ease the transition but he refused each time so I went with the cold turkey approach.
I won't lie, it was a tough day but I had already resigned myself to a hellish 24 hours so I wouldn't crack after the first feed. We started with my husband trying but he screamed blue murder for a whole hour before falling asleep exhausted, same again on the following two feeds. Then at 10pm (14 hours since his last BF) he finally gave in and took a whole bottle from me in 5 minutes.
5 days in and he is perfectly fine - no ill effects, just as happy and is accepting bottles from anyone. I even express in front of him and he doesn't show any interest (his formula is disgusting so I'm expressing to mix a bit of BF in each feed for the first few days).
Don't feel that you are 'harming' your baby by doing this - as long as they know they are loved and secure, then you can be certain that the screaming (and there will be tons of it!) is due to disgust and anger, not pain or starvation. Also, when it gets tough, just console yourself that by persevering now you're saving yourself an even worse time later because they'll know if they can beat you once they can do it again!
Good luck.
x

Also, we didn't bother buying tons of different bottles and teats - partly because I couldn't afford to but also because he only had my nipples to choose from for the first 19 weeks and he got used to them, so I think maybe too much choice is a bad thing, unless a baby is allergic to one of the teat materials.

I had this with ds3 - just would not take a bottle at all from anyone and I was also going back to work. In the end he would sip from a "doidy" cup that we held for him (only put a tiny bit of milk in or it goes everywhere) and then at 7months when I went back started on sippy cups. I fed him before and after work and at night so we managed even though he didn't take a huge amount of milk during the day.
I also explained to work that I was bf, son would not take a bottle and I could not travel. They were ok about it.

My dd is nearly 14 months old and has taken a bottle of milk a grand total of 4 times - and that was at a push! I've been back to work since she was 9 months old. I too tried all sorts of bottles, cups and beakers, but no joy with any sort of milk. She's been drinking water just fine from several different cups and beakers from 5 months old though! My ds was given 1 bottle of ebm from being 10 days old and was happy with that (also gave daddy some bonding time) but dd is so fussy! To start off with I would go back in my lunch hour and give her a feed as well as taking in a bottle of fresh bm and making sure she had plenty before going and when she got home (and through the night since she seems to spend more time in our bed than her own...) She would never touch the bottle though, just spit it out and scream if it came near her. I gave up taking one in the end. I have also stopped going in on my break now as we're trying to get her to drink cows milk (it's proving to be a long, slow process...)
I too was worried about leaving her. The first night I went out after having her (also the longest time we'd been apart) she was 7 months old and I was out for 3 hours. She spent 2 1/2 of that screaming the house down But I took her for a settling in session at nursery for an hour with me there and she was having fun. She went back for another hours session a few days later and I had to leave her. When I went back, it was as though she'd only just realised I'd left! Granted when she had the longer days, she would often cry but since sleep without milk has never been a strong point for her, she would spend a lot of it whimpering, but 5 months down the line and they're even getting her to have 2 hour naps without it! (I can't even get her to do that at home!)
My oh has had no problem bonding with her, although given the choice, she'd have mummy any day. There's still a few tears when I go to work when he's in charge, but it's all forgotten within a few minutes.