Bottle Feeding my 3 month old

[Corky]

I have a 12 week old girl who has been a nightmare feeder since week 1. She's been on SMA Gold since week 1 and has been difficult to feed ever since. At every feed halfway through she needs a huge burb then it is impossible to get her to finish the other half as she screams blue murder at you, it can take me an hour to coax the remainder down her.
In the last week we've moved her to Cow & Gate thinking it was the milk as I've heard SMA can give babies stomach ache, however, she still seems to not want to finish a feed, and she is barely finishing 6oz bottles.
Also - does anyone have a trick for wind as when she first starts feeding she's so hungry you can literally hear it hitting the bottom of her stomach and I think she gets lots of wind in, hence the large burps.

Maybe she's just had enough - at 12 weeks I wouldn't be surprised if they could only take in 3 or 4 oz in one go. I know they say 7 oz is a feed, but if she doesn't want anymore then maybe it's best not to force her.

What bottles are you using? The Avent ones are really good for avoiding wind.

I bottle feed my 14 week old daughter with Cow & Gate, and she can be a difficult feeder and never wants to part with a burp. Not sure if this will help but we feed her with her back as straight/upright as possible using a cushion to support her back, and use Avent bottles which are supposed to stop wind etc. What size teats are you using, my daughter has just changed to 3, and now does much bigger burps. I now let her dictate when she wants a burp, I used to stop her and she didn't like that, now if she pulls off and bottle not finished I know she needs to burp. To burp I lie her flat for about 2 mins on lap, then bring her up slowly to sitting and rub pat/back for quite a while or put on shoulder to get the burp out. I sometimes have to lie her flat a few times before burp comes out. When I then put her back to feed she messes about either by screaming or smiling (depending on her mood) so I just now let her sit in the feeding position for about 5/10 mins (not putting bottle anywhere near her then try her again and she will finish her bottle I also just put the bottle near her lips, before that we were putting bottle into her mouth and she got really cross.

Hope that helps.

We are using Avent and size 3 teats - the size of the burps though are massive - like mans burps!

Thanks for the advice though. Problem is she's suffered from low weight gain, and we want her to gain more weight as she's in the bottom average of the growth curve.

What bottles do you use? Maybe you need to change your bottles or their teats to help reduce the wind.

Thanks Deeldee - some useful tips about sitting upright and not feeding her straight away after a burp - I'll try those! I do worry that we keep changing teats, milk etc that she's getting confused, but I suppose if you don't try things you'll never know.

Hi Corky

How long does she go between feeds? If she goes quite a long time (3-4 hours) between feeds during the day then she may just not want any more milk. Our ds did something similar when he was about the same age as your dd. He would burp and then take the bottle back in his mouth but he would keep screaming and writhing around. In the end I decided that he just wasn't hungry any more and this was his way of telling me.

I found he could sometimes be persuaded to take a bit more after the burp if I re-warmed the milk a little (very naughty this! but he was a quick feeder and I never kept the warmed feeds for more than an hour).

We used MAWS variflo teats which we found very good. They will fit Avent bottles. They are supposed to reduce colic.

HTH

Have you tried a slower teat? Maybe the milk's going in too quickly so she's getting a lot of air too. The Avent Variflow teats are good because you can choose fast, medium or slow depending how you hold the bottle.

Corky, my dd is now 8.5 months and was and still is a difficult milk feeder. I breast feed her to 3 months and she was a nightmare, sucking for very short periods of time and then taking up to 40 mins to do a burp (she is my 2nd baby so I know my burping technique is good). If I tried to put her back on the breast she would scream like a banshie. Since changing her on to bottles she has been exactly the same, sometimes only taking 2/3floz at a time.
I tried her on every different type of formula, different makes of bottle and different teat flows and could see no improvement with any of them. I have just come to the conclusion that she is probably not going to be a big milk drinker. She eats very well and I give her lots of yoghurts, cheese and mix milk in with her veg, cereal etc.
Our dd was lowish weight gain too but seemed perfectly healthy in every other way and now she is eating well, she is getting more chubby.
Hopefully once you start weaning your little one she will eat well and you can get milk down her that way.
Good luck.

One of my friends had similar with her dd, and to this day she only has a very small appetite, but is a lovely little girl, maybe a little petite but then some of us (not me!!!) are made that way.