Bottle refusal and breastfeeding

[Coffeebeans24]

My 9 week old son is breastfed with the odd bottle since birth. Initially took the odd bottle fine then started refusing. This absolutely worried me because I never planned to breastfeed for long and I started trying one regular bottle a day of formula...some days he will accept it (after some struggle) and some days will completely refuse.

My mental health is not great as I am really keen to now wean him off breastfeeding and feel trapped. Today I tried to hold out...and managed to make him have 2 consecutive feeds of around 1.5oz each but again this was after a great struggle. I then gave up and gave him a good breastfeed as he was looking quite upset and hungry by the evening.

Has anyone been through this? I can't face breastfeeding for much longer and I am keen to switch to formula.

Just to add I have tried expressed milk and initially he took this and now refuses this too.

Does he take the bottle any better from someone other than you? With you he’ll he able to smell breast milk so worth trying your partner feeding him while you go out for a walk.

Someone else needs to give the bottle. My baby still doesn't reliably take a bottle at 11 months but he will 100% never take it from me.

Keep trying mama. They get it eventually, but still so young and will need time. I tried everyday for about 2 months for it to become easy combi feeding. Good luck

Thank you for the replies. I think the issue is that he takes such a small amount and so inconsistently that I can't wean him off breastmilk. Even going cold turkey I'm worried he will only take a few oz in 24 hours and that as well after lots of crying. How do people do this?! It's my first time breastfeeding and I feel like it's not talked about enough...sometimes I think had I known bottle refusal was a thing I would never have bothered from the start. I keep reminding myself why I chose to initially do it but I always planned to stop around 3 months and don't want to be tied down to this for longer

He seems to be less likely to take it from someone else

Just on what you said that you never would have breastfed if you knew about bottle/formula refusal....I feel you and I get it. I am still breastfeeding my 11 month old and I NEVER thought I would. My mental health was severely affected around 3 - 4 months by being trapped under my baby every 90 minutes. In our case, formula made him extremely sick (turns out he has a soy and dairy allergy) so I had no choice but to continue.

But....we got to 5 months and it suddenly got easy. I just had to lie down next to him on the playmat, he'd roll to me, feed for 5 minutes and done (they get super efficient).

Then we started weaning and it was so much work, the faff, the cooking, the cleaning, I was so so grateful to still be breastfeeding. It seems so easy in comparison 😂

Now at 11 months I am back to feeling trapped and looking to wean soon.

It's a journey.....

The thought if continuing to BF to 11 months just stresses me out that's how done I am...I really hope he just starts accepting a bottle consistently. I wanted to do a slow wean but if he's accepting I'm happy to pump to avoid mastitis and just continue to switch to bottle cold turkey

My combi fed baby wouldn't take a bottle from me till 4.5 months, only from dad. Then it got much easier for me to give a bottle. I don't know what changed!

From 12 weeks, my baby fed much more quickly (big help), made feeding at home and on the go less stressful. You aren't physically pinned down the same way.

Combination fed babies may not drink the large volumes it says on the box, they are used to little and often.

I never thought I would BF beyond 12 weeks, I found the first month so hard. But I kept going till 8 months and I COULD go out at night, could go back to work etc. You do what works for you!

Is this because he was happily taking a bottle of formula from dad?

Thank you for the kind words and support. I just feel like my mental health is spiralling and until I get him fully on a bottle now I won't be able to mentally rest. However, it's a little bit out of control right now.

Yep, baby happy to have a bottle once a day from dad, but really unhappy if I tried to give a bottle.

We did the last bottle of the day before bed was formula and just made that totally consistent and only bought in day time bottles at 4.5 months.

If your baby will take small volumes from a bottle, that's a good start.

My daughter had intermittent bottle aversions, they were caused by allergies and silent reflux.
One strategy I found helpful to get her back on the bottle was to offer her an Oz of breastmilk in a bottle after each day time feed. At first she wouldn't even let the bottle near her mouth but then she started to drink a little and then she would accept a bottle from dad whilst I got some sleep.
I think offering her the bottle when not hungry and at a time she associated with feeding helped. I had the bottle ready at the start of the feed so switched from breast to bottle without moving her. I had high lipase and it had to be fresh breastmilk as I think the taste was also a problem.

Small volumes but after lots of encouragment. Usually walking swaying singing with the bottle in his mouth. I guess my main issue is how I make the full switch....I don't want to combi I need him to just go full bottle but maybe that's a day of no boob and repeated bottle offering despite tears...which is really hard to do.

I considered doing this but he feeds so frequently that I don't know when to pump. When I do pump I end up with the smallest amount only!

My combination fed soon to be weaned is 7 weeks and we did a bottle a day she's now at 4 bottles but only has one big feed from bottle at around 1pm other bottles are only 2oz

I'm lazy and use ready made formula for such small amounts

I really sympathise with the feeling of being trapped, had the same issue and my kid never took the bottle, went to cups around 8 months but BF until 13 months. So I was never more than an hour or two away from her for over the first year. Same for baby 2. In retrospect it was hard, but I guess no one had really prepared me for how intense it would be and I am trying to help you manage your expectations.

It sounds like he is thriving with the breastfeeding, getting him onto bottles is causing both of you a lot of stress. Honestly, 9 weeks is still so tiny, I would park this until at least when you start to wean, because at this stage there are variables like is he getting enough, is he finding the formula digestively harder than breastmilk, allergies as someone said, is he wanting comfort. Things change really quickly during the first year.

I say this not because all of the breast is best but because the fact of the matter is even if you do get him onto bottles he will still need you with the same intensity. You may not get relief from feeling trapped like you think you will. Whereas if you make a decision to persist with Bfing at least you will have a sense of control over the situation which you currently feel you don't have. It will also help with the cognitive dissonance which will contribute so much to feeling overwhelmed.

I really agree with @timbitstimbytes . I posted here around the 2-3 months mark too under a different name because I was SO overwhelmed. In the end, discovering he had a dairy allergy and realising I actually have no choice at this point because the allergy formula is nasty as hell, made me feel a lot better. I made a decision to carry on rather than flip flop back and forth and it made things more manageable. I told myself I am doing the best for my baby and he is thriving, patted myself on the back, and carried on. Mentally it made a world of a difference.

The important part of me doing this was only using the tiniest amounts of milk. One there was less stress if she ignored it and less pressure on me to pump. I pumped after the last the previous feed for the next feed. I wasn't after her taking a feed from the bottle just for her to associate the bottle with food and once we got to that stage we could then introduce bottle feeds.

I think you probably need to try to crack the bottle before making the switch.

We did go cold turkey as I was unwell unable to continue feeding. My daughter was 10 months by this point and it was brutal. She went 26h without drinking!

That sounds really tough...I'm hoping mine will cave sooner. He certainly can suck at a bottle...I have managed to get him to drink 1-2oz but its inconsistent. So over a few days he's rejected 3 and maybe accepted the 1 and drank a couple of oz. Then back to rejecting them again and then caved and drank half a oz.
So he should already know the bottle is linked to milk by now!

I'm nervous he will drink like 1oz then hold out for many hours and drink another 1oz and the risk of dehydration if I go cold turkey but its affecting my mental health enough for me to recognise this needs to just be done...

Thank you for the advice and guidance

Thank you...I have decided to park the issue and revisit in a week and see how I feel. He has already dropped a centile in weight and I was afraid when he get reweighed if he drops further I will be advised to go to formula top ups

Do you mind sharing how you realised he had a dairy allergy ?

I think him refusing bottles has really spiralled mentally. I was happy breastfeeding before that but the sudden realisation has made me panic and feel trapped.

Mine would never take a bottle. It is hard. I had friends who would leave a bottle of expressed milk with their husbands and merrily go to the hairdressers or whatever. No such luck. The stress of trying to take a bottle made me feel more anxious though and in the end I just resigned myself to breastfeeding. From about 5 months though I could give milk in a cup occasionally. Not ideal I know but helped if I had to go somewhere.

Re the dairy allergy, it was very obvious. Serious reflux/vomiting, squirming, in a lot of discomfort. We confirmed it by giving him 2 teaspoons of yogurt at 6 months and ended up at the drs as he couldn't stop vomiting, poor thing. Unfortunately the formula suitable for dairy allergy tastes rank, smells worse, and is full of so many additives and shite, and also makes reflux much much worse as it's so thin...so decision was easy in a sense. I decided I had no choice but to persevere and see the good side (if i hadn't breastfed he would have been extremely sick as a newborn and would have had to go on the allergy formula early on) which made me feel in control.

I do really sympathise, I posted on here feeling suicidal around 3 months. It improved by 5 months, massively, genuinely. At 6 months it felt like the easiest thing in the world.

Hello OP,

I struggled with my daughter when she was 5mo, what helped was trying different shapes of bottles. In particular I looked for those that tried to replicate the sensation of breastfeeding. We transitioned gradually, she was exclusively bottlefed from 6mo.

I have gone through the ‘really NEED to stop breastfeeding, can’t do this anymore, get this baby off me phase atleast twice, and going into the third time lol she also had/has bottle aversion it took me trying bottle with her every day for over a month when she was about 4 months old to get her to even suck a bottle, she used to just chomp on the teat, the “can’t do this anymore” phase comes n goes, my lo is 18 months and still has feed for nap, bedtime and once in the night but getting to a point where i just want my body (and my bed) back, if you can push through the phases and get out the other side it really is a wonderful experience that at times i was genuinely very sad thinking about stopping and didn’t want to but now i don’t feel like i need to stop nor do i feel sad about stopping it just feels like its time xx