9 week old fussing and refusing feeds!? Please help

[Emmaeloiseee]

Hi,

my son who’s 9 weeks has suddenly stopped liking his bottle! He’s been on dr brown bottles since birth and takes 4oz every 3/4 hours in the day and goes 6 hours without a feed at night. He’s on size 1 teat.

for the past 2 days his latch on the bottle has gone weak and he’s not wanted to finish the feed, pulling his bottle out with his hands or squirming away. When I take the bottle out he cries for it again. We tried a size 2 teat and although he takes the feed fine with it, it doesn’t solve the problem and the squirming starts shortly after.

he’s been on kendimil since birth and has no signs of an allergy to the milk as he’s been fine for 9 weeks! No rash and no vomiting etc and he’s still happy and smiling.

I have to say he has been sleeping a lot more the past two days but no signs of an illness such as a cold.

any ideas? I’m ringing the HV tomorrow

Sounds 100% like my little one when he had reflux at the same age. It was a miserable time and unfortunately he dropped 2 centiles in weight before HV accepted it wasn't behavioural! Certainly speak to your HV but ultimately you should go to the GP - mine was like a new baby just 2 days after starting omeprazole.

Could be reflux. My little boy is on omeprazole (although also has a cow’s milk allergy) and it does help a lot!
is he bringing up any of the milk? Or making gulping noises after feeding as if swallowing milk back down?
I will say I absolutely loved Dr Brown bottles until he started slowing down on feeds and getting frustrated as the size 1 was too slow, so I changed to size 2 teat at 12 weeks as they’re 3 months +. The flow was MUCH too fast for him and he was fussing on them even more. I read that a few people have had this problem and could do with a size 1.5. Anyway, we went back to Mam bottles which we originally started with but their size 2 teat which is recommended for 2 months + and everything has massively improved.

weve been to the doctors before over reflux issues and they don’t think he’s got it. He’s not a sicky baby and doesn’t gulp etc. like you we started on MAM bottles but due to gas we changed to dr browns. I did actually try MAM bottles yesterday with the size 2 teat which he choked on and refused even more. Today has been slightly better and he took his usual 4oz for two feeds with no fussing until the end of the feed which I removed the bottle myself. Don’t know what’s up with him!

Unfortunately sounds like silent reflux. I had exactly the same thing with my daughter at around 9 weeks. We tried everything, the docs didn’t think it was reflux either but eventually we got prescribed omeprazole which seemed to help. We stopped it when she was 6 months. In the meantime, my advice is don’t pressure him too much to feed as you could inadvertently cause a bottle aversion. It’s very stressful but it’s even worse when they’re also scared of being fed as well as the pain from the reflux.

Sadly we’ve already had and tried omeprazole for two weeks. Made no difference in the past when I thought he had it at 4ish weeks from him gulping in the night and sour milk breath. In the end we stopped it due to him refusing to take it with him gagging on it. Since stopping it he’s been okay, no more gulping and his breath smells normal, been taking his feeds for 5 weeks normally. The only thing that’s changed is he’s got very watery eyes the past 3 days I thought it could be hay fever related?