I’ve lost hope a bit really, but wondered if anyone had any advice on how to get baby breastfeeding again?
My DS is 4 months old. He was exclusively breastfed till around 6 weeks old, then he had one small bottle of formula in the evening during his ‘witching hours’ because he would completely refuse the breast when he was upset despite being hungry. Things improved and he went back to being exclusively breastfed for about 6 weeks.
Then when he was 3 months he went on a ‘nursing strike’ - this lasted a week and during that time he was given expressed milk from a bottle in between breast feeds (he refused to latch unless he was asleep).
Everything was good again for a week until he went on his second ‘strike’, again he wouldn’t latch unless asleep and even then it was a struggle. I saw the GP, the health visitor twice, a breastfeeding consultant, attended support groups and rang helplines but nothing has helped and no one knew the cause. I still don’t. At the moment he is breastfed twice in the night, he will happily accept the breast during the night, and sometimes once during the day if I’m lucky. The rest of the time he refuses. I am expressing as much as I can but have also had to start supplementing with formula because the constant expressing was getting me down. The whole situation has got me down. Initially I felt quite rejected but I guess as long as he’s fed is the main thing.
Does anyone have any advice at all on how I might be able to get DS back fully on the breast? I just feel like he has a preference for bottles now and I don’t know if there’s anything I can do.