Going into a panic about 13 wk old refusing bottle-is this the time to stop Bf'ding?

[Sophie1106]

Hi all

My 13 wk old has recently started to refuse the bottle(over the last couple of days) She has been combining both breast and bottle feeds since she was about 7 weeks old. This suited me fine as it meant that although she cluster feeds all evening I managed to get a golden couple of hours to myself if the MIL came over to babysit etc.. However the fact she's refusing now has changed the ball game and although thinking about giving up makes me feel very guilty I need some time to myself for my own sanity. Firstly I would be interested to hear from anyone who has experienced similar with their baby (i.e refusing bottle) and what happened(did they go back to it with a different bottle type?)and also evening feeds (i.e did they grow out of it?). Also if you gave up bf'ding in similar circumstances. Thanks in advance for your support.

In what way does she refuse the bottle? What does she do?

Does she refuse the bottle from you or from anyone. A lot of babies will refuse the bottle from their mothers, but will accept the bottle from a different care giver if hungry.

My son refused the bottle and we just got him to drink out of a tommy tiptee cup instead.

Don't lose heart. See if your baby will take the bottle for your mother in law.

Hmm, my DS1 stopped taking a bottle at 9 weeks and never took one again, despite all my best efforts. Stopping bfeeding wouldn't have been an option for me because I am sure he would have been quite happy to dehydrate himself rather than take a bottle. At four months when I went to my work Christmas party he was happy to go to sleep without an evening feed rather than take a bottle. When I went back to work when he was 10 months he just went down to two feeds a day - morning and evening. He self weaned at 14 months and did not drink any milk of any kind again until he was 2 when he randomly asked for a cup of milk! But he is, still at 4 years old, incredibly stubborn so your DD wouldn't necessarily the same. It's fairly common for them to stop taking a bottle once they are alert enough to realise it isn't as good as the alternative and I do know of a few people who perservered and managed to get them to take a bottle or a cup in the end. DS2 is 13 weeks now and, aside from a few formula top ups in the early days when he lost weight I haven't bothered with a bottle this time round on the grounds life is too short. Hope it all works out for you.