Back to work in March. Baby won't take bottle. Can you help?

[Sunshinemummy]

DD is 5 months and I am going back to work at the beginning of March. I've been breast feeding her but we introduced bottles of expressed milk early on as I really wanted her to be mixed fed and wanted to be able to leave her with sitters occasionally. So far so good.

A couple of months ago I went out and we DP gave her a bottle of formula. She was really ill and ended up going to hospital as she was sick for about 5 hours solid. A few weeks later we tried again and she was really sick again. Since then she's refused bottles.

I've talked to GP and Health Visitor about formula problems and they've advised me to try a different type, so I have another to try but have been unable to as I can't get DD to take a bottle.

It's literally a full on battle with her screaming and pushing it away and me holding her and squeezing it down her throat (and this is with expressed milk). I've tried a few different bottles to no avail.

She's starting nursery mid Feb so I really need to get this fixed and I also want to start phasing out breast feeding for most of her feeds. Does anyone have any advice/experience?

What about a cup. have you tried giving her an empty bottle to play with. She may get used to putting the teat in her mouth this way as see it is not going to make her ill.

I am afraid i am in exactly the same position, I hope someone comes up with some advice for you!

You can give her milk in a cup (although wait till she's over 6mo, just for the mechanics aspect) for nursery then carry on bfeeding morning and night. That's what I did when I went back to work, although in my case DD was 9mo.

She won't let herself starve - but as she knows you have what she wants up your Tshirt she won't take second best?!

Ask someone else to feed her with a bottle?

Try and get her used to a cup with a soft spout - just for sips at first.

If you are back at work 8-6pm Mon to Friday she can still have all the milk she needs from you in the evening and make do with bits and pieces (is she on any solids? - I know it's early but yoghurt is milk protein too) during the day.

I bet she'll learn to take a cup or bottle from the nursery workers as soon as she gets there.

Agree - no need for a bottle with a baby of this age at all. It's not worth the grief! Cup feeding is perfectly feasible

Ww had exactly the same prob, eventually succeeded immediately with the Haberman feeder.

Ooh what's the Haberman feeder? Thing is I want to limit the breast feeding more as she's still getting me up every two hours in the night which will kill me working full time.

Also want to start her on solids but worried re. formula problems and whether that will have an effect.

BTW what kind of cups do you recommend?

She's still quite tiny which is why she's wanting to feed at nights. Once you introduce solids that may, or may not, improve. I'm afraid you can really never tell.

I don't understand why the formula issue would impact on starting solids. Are you worried that she may not accept you feeding her things? If that's the case, start her on finger foods, so she maintains some control, then introduce purees (if you're going down the puree route) at a later stage. Or do a mixture of both.

Haberman feeder I think is now called a "special needs" feeder. I found it online-quite expensive but worth every penny.You squeeze the milk into a resevoir in the teat and you can adjust the flow. To me it was the end of many many stressy weeks trying so many other bottles and methods.Once she got used to it(very fast) she then took a "normal" bottle -no prob.

The reason I think it might impact is that because she's been sick both times she's had forumla I'm worried that she's allergic or intolerant to cows milk, which I'm assuming will impact what I can feed her. I need to try her on this other formula first to see if this makes her sick as well. If all well and good then I'll consider giving her baby rice but then I intend to baby-led wean as I did that with her brother.

The trouble with the night time thing is that she slept right through for the first three months so it's only been the last two months that she's been waking up and I'm really struggling with it.

I might haave a look for the feeder then - sounds good. She was great with bottles until she was sick - now it's real struggle.

Sympathy re the waking thing, mine slept through pretty much from birth only to start waking when she started solids. It was never an every 2 hour thing though, you have my sympathy.

Do you need the formula to mix with baby rice? Can you not use bm, or water, or veg broth + olive oil (as they do here)? Have you tried giving the formula on a spoon for now? Maybe try just a small quantity to start with? Your DD might not actually be intolerant to the milk part of formula, but maybe to one of the other ingredients they add - could you try a brand with the least "embellishments"?

I hadn't thought of trying other things apart from breast milk but maybe that's an option. I'm not enjoying expressing as the two hourly feeding is already making my nipples really sore.

I was trying Aptamil and I now have some Hipp Organic to try.

Aptamil is full of rubbish. Mine got on well with Hipp, no mystery "closer to breastmilk" ingredients in it.

The veg broth thing is very easy - either boil up a potato, carrot and courgette then strain the broth, freezing cubes of what you don't need, or else do it the lazy way like me - use the liquid left over from steaming veg. Stir in a teaspoonful of extra virgin olive oil and off you go.

Aptamil was the one our son liked best but am encouraged by what you say about Hipp.

Veg broth thing sounds good. So I then mix that in with the baby rice?

Yes. It's what we're told to use for weaning here. After a month you're supposed to add mature Parmesan. I didn't follow their guidelines to the letter (I preferred a more varied diet) but the veg broth + cereal combination came in very handy on many an occasion.

Excellent that's really useful to know. Where are you?

Italy.