9 month old BF and refuses milk from bottle and cup

[helen2001]

Hi,

This is my first message on mumsnet. My daughter is 9 months old and BF. We started giving her bottles of EBM at 2 weeks and introduced a formula top up at bedtime at 5 months. At 6 months she started refusing bottles (EBM and formula) and then stopped taking them completely while on holiday (teething, had nasty virus, hot country, away from home so we didn't feel it was sensible force it). Since then we have tried several bottles and she either plays or screams but won't drink. It makes no difference if it's me or anyone else trying to feed her. She's fairly competent with the tommee tippee 4m+ cups for her water at lunchtime. I've tried giving her formula in the cup at breakfast and tea time but she hardly has anything, even though she will happily eat porridge made with it. The rest of the time I'm BFing (3x per day) and have had to cancel 2 weddings and our anniversary night away because of it. I love BFing but am starting to want a bit of independence too. I'm going back to work in 2 months so want to stop BF at least a month before. Ideally I would have weaned her off one feed at a time but no chance of that now! We can't think of anything else to try except making her go cold turkey. I'm dreading it, will be traumatic for the whole family! Does anyone have any other ideas we can try? Has anyone tried cold turkey and how long did it take (so I can psych myself up)? Should we try the cup all day and the bottle for bedtime or just stick with the cup?
Please help!

Hi Helen,

What a nightmare for you. Have been through similar with DS2 and ended up going away for weekend with DS1 while DH did the biz. Apparently he was fine until he saw me again! i wuld say if your instinct is that he should start to mixed feed then persevere and it will come right in the end, although you could be in for a noisy week. DS2 finally got happy with a cheep as chips non valve cup that he didn't have to work too hard to get the milk out of. I also had to warm it more than I did for DS1 (he still hates cold things now) and the only formula he would take was Cow and Gate. Hope this helps and good luck!!!!!

I had the same problem with my ds when I went back to work when he was 6 months old.

We perservered (sp?) - I say me I mean my mum while I was working, but he has never had milk from a cup or a bottle. We did eventually get him to drink water and dilute fruit juice from a bottle and in the end we decided that he would have these while I was out and I'd feed him when I was at home.

At 9 months he self-weaned, and since then we have had to ensure he gets all his milk through food as until about a month ago (he's nearly 2) he would not drink it.

He was/is perfectly healthy and HV was happy with what we were doing (apparently her son was the same).

HTH