feeding and back to work.

[coragreta]

I need help. My ebf 6 month old is a bottle refuser and i am back at work on Monday. I have done 5 keeping in touch days and she takes no milk from any bottle or cup from when I leave till I get back. She tends to feed a bit more that night/next day which is fine but when I'm back at work full time she'll have no time to catch up. She has started weaning but only takes 2 mouthfuls and that's it so not exactly filling.
We had some weight gain issues at the start so I am doubly concerned.
I'm so worried and need advice. Does anyone have any tips or advice!

Hi, don't really have any advice but noticed you've had no replies. Do you have an infant feeding team in your area? If you have surestart centre they can usually point in the right direction. Is there no way of having little one brought to you for a feed mid way through the day to start with and then maybe try to persevere with the cup feeding, even whilst you are with baby.

We have only been weaning for 2 weeks but I have noticed ds has gone from a couple of mouthfuls to much more recently so milk may not be as much of an issue in the future (I know it isn't much help now)

My DD was slightly older (9 months) when I went back to work. I expressed to start with and sent the milk in to nursery but she wouldn't drink it so I didn't do that long.

She never did take a bottle but would eventually drink water from a sippy cup or a doidy. I would BF her when I dropped her off and as soon as we got home, and in the day she just managed. She upped her solid food intake at nursery. (They gave them breakfast, lunch and tea. Breakfast was weetabix with expressed milk, which she would eat quite happily)

Be prepared though that if you go down this route it involves reverse cycling, so they will feed all evening and much of the night. I took the view that as I hadn't seen her all day it wasn't much of an effort to keep that up for a while, so she didn't go to bed until 9-10pm. It won't work if you want a 7pm bedtime.

Thanks for the replies. I'm obviously still worried.
I Can't bring her in to work. Wouldn't be appropriate. I wish I could.
I've Been weaning for about a month and she's still hardly taking anything. It's so frustrating.
Lots of people say That she'll sort herself out but she hasn't so far. I'm also worried because she's on the small side. My husband is going to take her to the health visitor on Wednesday and see what they say.

Hi coragreta. I hope back to work went OK. I had a refuser but found success with Babycup. They are mini cups and worked really well for us. JoJo Maman Bebe have got them.

Thanks. Is that like a doidy? A few people have suggested that. It's hard to know if she's refusing because she's being stubborn or because she hasn't worked out how to do it.
She still isn't eating without me. Fingers crossed she'll sort herself out.

Hi coragreta. It's much smaller, I found it really good and it's a good mouth fit whereas cups like the other one mentioned were nearly as wide as my dd's head! (OK, not quite her head!! But not far off a cup I would use!!). I just had a read of the babycup reviews on the JoJo site and there's a lot of info. Might be worth a read on there?

The reviews are great. Would your little one take a full milk feed from the cup?
I'm going to order some. I think an open cup is the only thing I haven't tried yet.

They are small so need to be refilled but they were great and my dd's drank really well with them.

Then when my lo's were a bit older (maybe around 12 months??) they started to refill them with a little jug themselves (that was in the highchair, not wildly roaming...that could have turned very messy!).

Thanks for the help. I'll give it a go.

Still no joy. My husband is trying with the baby cups but still nothing is working. And now my lg is waking multiple times a night because she's hungry! Just what I need when I'm at work.