Help! Baby pushing bottle teat out of mouth.

[Havingkittens]

My DS is coming up for 4 months. I started introducing a bottle to him occasionally from around 6 weeks in the hope of avoiding bottle rejection. He used to take a bottle OK, but now he just pushes the teat out of his mouth. He's been doing this for a little while now but would take some of the milk, at least. Now he won't take it at all. It's the same thing he does when I try to give him a dummy. Not a rejection as such, more of a messing about and not 'getting' the suck reflex, rather pushing the teat around in his mouth with his tongue (which a cranial osteopath commented on a while back). This is a bit of a problem as I am hoping to start working a bit soon so have been expressing feeds for my OH to give him but he won't take the bottle.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Do you think it would make a difference using a different teat? If so, any recommendations? I am using Avent Newborn bottles at the moment. Is it too early to try a doidy cup? What if he won't take to that? Am I destined not to be able to leave his side until he is fully weaned?

How does he get on breastfeeding? Did he take to it well or did you have trouble?

I am wondering about tongue tie.

Its not too early for a doidy cup so you could try that.

Or maybe try an orthodontic teat where its angled up to the roof of the mouth a bit?

Breastfeeding was a big struggle for the first 10 weeks. He was checked for tongue tie by various lactation consultants and cranial osteopaths at OCC and everyone who checked said he didn't have tongue tie. They did say he had a mis-coordination of his top and bottom mandible though. His feeding is fine now, apart from the fact that he's a bit distractible as is typical of his age.

I have just found a Tommee Tippee First Sips cup in my bag of 'hand me downs' in the garage and have sterilised it ready to try that at his next feed. There are a couple of Doidy cups in there somewhere which I will search out when I get a chance. Not ideal though as sometimes my OH needs to feed him in the car outside where I am working. I wonder if a latex teat would be better as the silicone one is quite hard and not very nipple like.

Yeah, so were all these people!!

Please don't rule it out. It may be that they are right and there is no tongue tie, but have a read about it. Does any of it sound familiar? Something has caused the misalignment of the mandibles. Tongue tie can distort the oral and facial structure.

here

here

here

Our ds was doing this so I moved onto the next size teat and that solved it. He uses tommee tippee though so not sure if avent have different sized teats?

He still sometimes messes but think he's chomping on the teat as he's teething

The thing that eventually cracked it for ds2 was for me to rest almost all my hand on his cheek as I put the bottle in with that same hand. Iykwim?
I think the feeling of soft skin on the correct part of his face helped him to "get" what it was we were trying to do.
Hth x

Maybe it's the fact that bottles free flow the milk a lot faster and he's not used to it?

Try some of these tips to mimic a feed from a bottle so it is as close to breastfeeding as possible :)

nurturedchild.ca/index.php/2010/12/10/baby-led-bottle-feeding/

nurturedchild.ca/index.php/2010/12/10/baby-led-bottle-feeding/