urgent advice needed - can babies get bottle phobia???

[Mellieandmin]

My DD is 7 months and has sadly had one tummy bug after another over the last 3 months. Everytime we get a bit of speed up on weaning she goes down with a bug or a cold and it sets us back. This weekend we were away with a group of friends and 5 babies all got a bug including my DD. Now she screams if the bottle comes anywhere near her but then cries as she is hungry.

Having had a 7/7 sleeper since she was 14 weeks she is now up in the night again wanting milk, bottle does not seem to upset her so much at 5am but she still only takes a few ozs.

She was previously diagnosed with Reflux and we use Gaviscon which I was winding down, perhaps it has to go back up till tummy back to normal?

Do I follow the 14 day to heal philosophy or go to Docs??

Please help, after 3 months of fighting over every single mouthful I am starting to loose the plot............

Take her to an osteopath. My three children had colic and reflux. The DD2 was particularly bad. The change in her after one session was astounding. Give it a try.

Could she be teething? Sometimes sucking from the bottle hurts when teething...

Teething is a point, she is cutting on the cross which means she will look like a mad dracula by Christmas! I will try some calpol perhaps and see if that helps. She just seems to panic halfway through the bottle and then refuse anymore. If I try to put her in the highchair (where she has been sick twice after food recently due to bug) she has a total fit. Can babies have bad food/location associations? She will take dry rusk and toast crust if she can feed it to herself. No spoons allowed to come into her eyeline though with a fit.

We have had Osteo treatment for Colic and Reflux before as she had Colic till 4 months. Might try it again though. Each time she has this bug her milk refusal seems to become more pronounced. I would give it up as a bad job and increase cheese, yogurts, milky cereal if she would only eat anything but she won't.

She is such a happy baby it is horrible seeing her in such distress.

Ashton and Parsons teething powders are great..if you give her some it might help her to feed better...or try a tiny bit of bonjela. Spoons are also not popular with my DD when she is teething!

I think they do make associations. DS wouldn't eat chicken for nearly four years after a vomiting bug. He had had chicken for dinner and associated it with being sick and tasting awful. We never forced him to eat it and he started eating it again this year. I think your reaction is important also. Some children dont drink milk and get along just fine on other produce that has calcium and vit D in.