Refusing bottle why?

[Vmama]

my 12 wk old DS is exclusively breastfed but since he was 2 weeks old we have been giving him one EBM feed in a bottle at night. DH does this so as not to confuse DS and at night he takes the bottle fine however we have also given him the odd EBM bottle when we've been out and recently he's started to not feed when we've done that -in fact the last 3 times we've given him a bottle whilst out he's kept spitting out the teat and only ended up drinking an oz or so -today i ended up bfeeding him because i couldn't leave him without food but I'm worried because when i go back to work he'll be bottlefed and also if we ever need to leave him with anyone I need to know he won't starve -he's still happily taking the bottle at night so we cant figure out what's wrong -any thoughts/advice/similar experiences?

We had the exact same problem with our DS who is now nearly 6 months. He'll take a bottle at 10pm but any other time he thinks we're evil and won't take it. V frustrating!! We use the Tommee Tippee bottle that looks a bit like a nork and he's better with that. He's getting better but I too have to go back to work at the end of July so can understand your concewrns. Everyone tells me they won't starve themselves. I think that persistence is the best thing as I know loads of people who've had the same issue

Could be a couple of things - my DS2 went fussy on his normal evening bottle of EBM at this age too, took DH 2 weeks of persistence to get back to where we were, but we did. In the meantime I BF when he fussed on the bottle and wouldn't drink much. Oh, and we continued with the usual bottle, teat etc so as not to confuse him further. See my thread here

Another thing is to check your milk - have you tasted it to check it, are you using different EBM, maybe older, previously frozen? I know that a friends EBM tastes awful if it's been in the freezer for more than a week so worth a taste test to rule this out.

HTH

I wonder if you are trying when he is actually hungry. He may be adjusting his feeding pattern as he grows and requiring less frequent feeding as he takes more earlier or alternatively if you wait until he is crying he may be overhungry and less receptive. Unless it means him going very long without feeding at all I'd leave it a bit longer between feeds to try. Presumably work is a little way off yet , so time for him to change again.