Breast feeding & baby refussing to take a bottle.

[007angel]

I am currently breast feeding and my daughter is now 8mths old and will not take a bottle she has now 4 teeth and taking food the only fluids she is having is my milk anyone got any advice.

I have put breast milk in the bottle but she still will not take it - my daughter was feeding by bottle in hospital for 3 days (not by choice).

My second daughter wouldn't take a bottle at all either. She was breastfed too but only liked it straight from the boob! I started giving her water in a tommy tippe cup with her meals and she was fine with that. Kept on breastfeeding her too.

In my experience the milk feeds tailed off gradually after about 11 months as she ate more solids. Then bf was just a comfort thing.

Hope that helps

Will she take it from a cup or beaker? There is no need for her to use a bottle at all either - she is perfectly fine to still be breastfeeding.

If you do want her to specifically use a bottle, have you tried different brands? My mindee was offered several different brands until she finally started taking milk from one.

thank you for your message - I have tried different bottles beakers you name it i have done it, she depends on me and to be honest I need time to myself before I crack up just wish she would take something to give me a break.

DD1 was exactly the same. I have a cupboard full of all different types of bottles I bought to try and tempt her!
In the end, I gave up trying and just breast fed. She had water from a cup (with lid) with meals and milk from me. I tailed off the milk so that we stopped by 1year. I just made sure she had lots of cheese and yoghurts whilst I phased the breast feeding out.
I realise this is not what you want to hear and I really wish I had the magic answer but sadly I never found it. Hope that you have more luck then I did.

DS1 was the same and I too never found a solution, although he happily switched to cows milk from a beaker after his 1st birthday. DS2 oth happily took one and now I cant get him off at 16mo, so there's always something to worry about!!
How often does she feed atm? I know how you feel about getting a break if you've had in your mind that you would switch to the bottle, but really if she is doing OK on solids then leaving her for a day would be fine. A couple of times with DS1 I fed him in the morning, left him with MIL and then fed him when I returned. Once or twice I did this overnight, it just meant he drank more water and ate more food to make up for it whilst i was away, iyswim.

Can someone else feed her? My DS has gone through a couple of phases of bottle refusal. I had to make myself completely scarce so he believed he had no option but to take a bottle from DH if he was hungry.

Also try holding her in a different position to how she would normally feed (sitting up and facing away from you for example).

We had this problem, but earlier on, as I went back to work when DD was 5 1/2 months, so she still had to have milk in the day, and wasn't really old enough to rely just on a beaker (not that she would have been any happier with that). We tried different people, different teats etc but never got her to take more than an oz from a bottle, and that was only if she was really hungry or sleepy.

In the end I just went cold turkey and stopped offering her breast out of depseration - it was a horrible few days, but she gradually took the bottle as there was no other choice( sometimes expressed milk as I expressed for a couple of weeks to stop myself exploding, other times formula!). I guess going cold turkey may not be as useful for you, as your DD would be on solids so less relient just on milk.

Two things we did find helped her take the bottle more easily though: sitting her ina boucy chair / car seat etc, rather than on us - tip from another website and don't really know why, but it seemed to work. She seemd to panic less about it if she was less restrained by us I guess. also a few sucks of a dummy first seemd to help, if you use one - calmed her and got her in sucking mode!

it all meant I couldn;t do my original plan of her having milk from bottle in day and then BF from me in eve when back in work, which is a shame, but I knew she'd be drinking nothing in the day then keeping me up all night!