Breast refusal, only feeds when asleep - anyone else has this?

[PiggyPenguin]

Mu 16week old will only breast feed when asleep. He refuses to feed from a bottle or beaker and if we do manage to get ebm into his mouth he spits it out. He is happy alert and simply gorgeous. Has any one else had this, and will it get better?

DD (21 wks) was like this for a bit around this time, maybe a bit earlier. She was so distracted that she would only feed well during the night/bedtime/dreamfeed, when she was really tired.

What made things better was I started feeding her during the day in her room in the dark (if we were at home). If I was at a friend's, I would take her into a separate room.

Now, she is fine.

Can I ask how long it lasted for? ds has been doing this for around 8 weeks and I really don't know how much longer I can last. Sometimes I feel just desperate as he won't feed and cries when I try to feed him, but seems hungry and will feed as soon as he falls asleep.

I am having exactly the same problem with my 21 week old son. It has lasted for 6 weeks so far. I was told to introduce solids inthe daytime by the HV but this made the problem worse as it stopped him feeding in the daytime completely, so we are back to only BF.

Cutting down the night time feeds by amount first and then by stopping feeding after 3am helped to encourage him to take a 7am feed when he was awake, but was exhausting as he wanted to be comforted back to sleep every time he woke after 3am, but ultimately was able to fall asleep without the feed. After a few nights he stopped waking more than once and took more at the 7 am feed whilst wide awake and the mid morning feed also came back, but as pudding 25 says, I had to feed in his darkened room - difficult with an active toddler to entertain at the same time!

Now he has started teething and the only way to soothe him in the night is to feed him, so I am back to square one.
Good luck.