7 month old bottle refusing

[Onelittleone216]

Help my baby has stopped taking a bottle!

We introduced an occasional bottle when my LO was about 6 weeks old. He’s always taken it fine, from my husband and grandparents. It was initially expressed breast milk and now it’s nearly always formula. I’ve breastfed him since birth, he has a bottle of formula most days when my husband feeds him.

Since we started solids over a month ago he’s gradually taken less and less formula when having a bed time bottle with my husband. Last week we left him with my parents overnight and he took his bottles fine. The last couple of nights he’s taken less than 100ml from my husband!

Full context: he has done well on solids so far despite having an egg allergy. He has solids 3 times a day, otherwise breastfeeds on demand in the day time (about every 3 hours) and will wake twice for a breastfeed in the night. I’ve sometimes given him a bottle of formula when out and about as he can be distracted when breastfeeding and I don’t always want my boob out in public when he’s too busy staring at something to feed. Today I tried this and he didn’t even have 60ml (but then didn’t ask for breast milk either so could have just not been hungry).

He is still on the side 2 mam teats (!!), I’m going to try size 3 tomorrow, we tried them a while back and he didn’t get on with the faster flow but he might be ready now. If this doesn’t work does anyone have any other suggestions? I’ve always felt so lucky that he’s taken to bottles fine despite breastfeeding 95% of the time, and don’t want to worry about leaving him with my husband!

Hey. My 1st was the exact same and I'm slowly seeing this trend with my 2nd.
I think it might just be a "thing" some kiddos go through as they realise how boring milk is compared to new foods haha.

Personally. I made custards, mash, cheese sauce, rice pudding etc... everything that takes a water or milk ingredient and just used formula instead of cows milk.
Just make a bottle as normal and use that to add to the food. Then they are at least getting another bottle in. My health visitor said this advice too so might work for you.

Good luck 😃

Glad he’s not the only one!

Yes I’ve been using the left over formula in his breakfast etc.

What did you do about bed time? He can self settle pretty well, but he’s used to having a milk feed at bed time and feeds to sleep nearly every time (always when breast feeding, 90% of the time when having a bottle). Do we just hope he self settles without it?

For bedtime I used to give a supper a hour or so before bedtime then take a bottle upstairs with me to do the bedtime routine. Then I knew they wouldn't be going to bed hungry from not "liking" the bottle and having new preferences but the bottle was with me if they wanted it.
It was at this stage we started a new bedtime routine at night time like singing songs and telling stories to help them fall asleep.

Okay that makes sense 😊 thanks for sharing your experience!