8 week old suddenly refusing bottle - help!

[Eastie77]

Hello
Apologies in advance as I'm sure this subject has been raised before but I've only just come across this board.

I BF my 8 week old baby and express every day so that DP can bottle feed her in the evening and during the night. We introduced the bottle at around 5 weeks and for the past 3 weeks all has been fine with her happily taking the bottle when she wakes for a feed at around 3am. However for the past 2 days she has refused point blank to take the bottle. When DP tries she screams, shrieks and is inconsolable. She will only breastfeed. We've tried following some of the advice we found online:-

• DP moved to a different room to feed her so she cannot 'see' me when he gives her the bottle.
• He took an item of my clothing and laid it across his chest. One site said this familiar smell may help but I thought this would be counterproductive as it would remind her of breastfeeding with me but anyway..
• We tried using a different bottle & teat. We usually use Avent and swapped to use the bottle that came with the Medela Swing express pump. All to no avail.

Does anyone have any tried and tested methods that may help? I'm thinking of trying another bottle, Tommie Tippie Closer to Nature, but don't know if this will make a difference. The temperature of the milk we give her is the same as it has always been so don't think that is an issue.
Also I'm at a loss as to why everything would be fine with the bottle one day and suddenly change the next - I guess that is the nature of babies!

I'm slightly panicking as I'm due to go out for the day with some friends over the weekend and the plan was to leave baby with DP and bottles of expressed milk. I'm also exhausted a lot of the time so DP doing the evening/night feeds has been a godsend and I really feeling quite depressed at the thought of not getting this help any more.

Thanks,
Eastie

Try a variflow teat with tommee tippee bottle, that way she won't get frustrated that's it's not coming out enough or too fast, these like with your breast she can decide the amounts that come out if u get my drift.

Thanks. Had never heard of variflow before, I will order some.

The concern I have is that she didn't even want to the bottle near her mouth so not sure the problem is really with the teat i.e she wasn't sucking and then getting frustrated - she just seemed to have a sudden, extreme aversion to the bottle. I have picked up the Tommee Tippee bottle and am hoping this was some kind of temporary glitch.

Oh dear, well buy them from asda as it's the cheapest for teats, I've bought all mine from there, they're on 2 for £6 atm

Thanks, I bought the variflow teats but it made no difference. As soon as the bottle was placed near her mouth she screamed. DP tried 2-3 mins and then gave in and I breastfed. Has anyone experienced this and found their baby eventually accepted the bottle again?

This is very common with mixed feed babies.
It happened with both of mine one at around 8 weeks and one at around 8 months!
The short answer may be there is no quick and easy fix. In the end neither of my two ever had a bottle again.
We did persevere for a little while but with youngest at 8 weeks she was my firstborn and her distress at the bottle was hard to handle so we just gave up.
I do have a friend who managed to get a 7 month old to take a bottle, she went out and just left her DH to get on with it. In the end she was hungry enough and gave in.
You may have to decide how important the bottle is to you because you may have a battle on your hands. One that includes a lot of crying!

I suspect its easier just to feed? All of my bubs have refused bottles when I have gone back to work. They have all survived too! They just fed more when I got home! Ds had some bottles in the early weeks.. Now at 5 months.. Won't touch them! Milk straight from the cow!