Has anyone actually experienced breast refusal?

[ThatOchreQuoter]

I’m currently pregnant with baby number 2. My first DD was exclusively breastfed. I waited until 8 weeks to pump and introduce a bottle of breastmilk as per the advice given to establish my supply and avoid breast refusal. But she was not happy at all about the bottle, it was an actual nightmare in all honesty. She would sometimes accept it but she would be so upset. It meant I could hardly leave her.

I have loved breastfeeding and I’m definitely going to breastfeed this baby but I’m considering introducing a bottle a lot earlier to avoid bottle refusal. However I am apprehensive in case of breast refusal.

Has anyone actually experienced breast refusal/bottle preference? Bottle refusal seems much more common to me and people combination feed successfully from the start.

My little one failed to latch, she just could not ‘get it’, so after a while she refused the breast and was exclusively bottle fed

My boy is 7 months and I can’t get him on to a bottle!
i highly recommend combi feeding, do they are no stranger to a bottle should you decide to stop.
my first son refused, he was exclusively bottle fed.

We have breastfed and bottle fed expressed since DD was tiny (basically since we stopped giving her those tiny syringes of colostrum). We have never been willing to stop one or the other, I think the issue is that all babies go through fussy phases, and being both bottle & breastfed gives us another ‘reason’ for said fussyness. For example, I can think of the odd occasion where she didn’t seem to want to bf but would take a bottle and vice versa, but we always just persevered with both.

I think something that really helped was the fact DD had a great latch from the get go so that was never an issue, and my wife was very strict with only pace feeding when she was giving a bottle (i was bf).

I was rigid with doing night feeds and pumping if my wife did a night bottle for the first few months, but in the end my supply was good enough that I would have the odd full nights sleep with zero effect on my supply. We have had a very positive experience & found we have got the benefits of both bf & bottle feeding tbh. I think you’re in a good position having bf before as I think sometimes where this doesn’t work for people is not establishing the supply initially.

DD is 11m & in nursery now and I send expressed in. Can’t tell you how stress free it was as having bottles was the norm for her. We still bf at home no problem.

ETA - I’ve 2 friends who also combi fed. One mainly bf with some bottles, it’s her second time and she is still going at nearly 12 months. My other friend, it was her first baby & she didn’t really establish a supply by not pumping enough & supplementing with formula. As a result she gave more bottles but still her baby bf in an evening until about 7 months when she stopped due to preference.

We introduced a bottle with my daughter at 3 weeks old and we had intermittent bottle aversions. This was due to allergies and reflux which also caused issues with breastfeeding. We never had any preference for the bottle over the breast. I breastfeed until 10 months and it was a huge battle to get her on to bottles and formula but unfortunately I wasn't well enough to continue breastfeeding

I have a 5 week old now. He needed formula for the first 36h as he wouldn't wake up to breastfeed and had low blood sugars. We have continued with a bottle of ebm 2-3 times a week so that my partner has some milk at hand on the days I do bedtime with my daughter and the morning I had to go for a scan when he was a 5 days old. We haven't noticed any impact on breastfeeding

I'd say pretty much everyone I know that waited past 6 weeks never managed to get the on the bottle. We made the decision this time around to introduce bottle earlier and to try to keep it up more regularly than we did with my daughter. When we started to have feeding problems with breastfeeding we stopped giving her bottles as I didn't have the headspace for expressing and that contributed to her bottle aversions and then it took more time and effort to try to get her to accept the bottle again.

My DC1 did eventually but only when she was up to like 60 per cent bottle feeds / 40 per cent breastfeeds. I was in the process of slowing weaning her on to the bottle and that was the tipping point, once she was having more bottle than breast she decided she didn't want the breast anymore. Initially she would breastfeed first thing in the morning for a little while still then refused that too. I wasnt really bothered as was weaning her anyway as I say. She was nearing 3 months old then. Bottle introduced at two weeks old, had a few a week and was fine with breast or bottle. DC2 bottle introduced at 2 weeks old, again had a few a week but was otherwise breastfed without issue until 10 months old. DC3 refused a bottle at all until he was 8 months sadly despite trying to introduce it loads from also being 2 weeks old.

We introduced a bottle of pumped milk at 3 weeks old. Once per day in the evening. In the early weeks it helped me because it was painful to feed her (tongue tie and after it took her weeks to learn how to feed properly, until 9 weeks old she would chomp because that’s all she knew). She’s now almost 6 months old and still has one bottle in the evening and still feeds from me the rest of the time.

The only times she hardly took was a few weeks ago when she had a very bad cold. She would feed for 30 seconds (instead of 6-10 minutes) so I would pump 1-2 ounces and bottle feed it after each feed. I did that for a few days, she went back to breastfeeding fine when she was well again.