Bottle refusal

[jey91]

Apologies in advance for the long post but I have never been this stressed and I am desperate for help.

My dd is 7 months old and i'm due to return to work 4 days a week in November where I will be away from her from 5.30am-6pm every day. I am also due to do 3 KIT days next week in the office. The problem is that my dd has a severe case of bottle refusal, and I say severe because I have tried everything possible every day for the past 4 months. Before she turned 3 months old she would take the bottle, never as easily as breast but I could leave her with my mum for around 6 hours with no issues.

I am extremely stressed about this as I have no option but to return to work and although I can wfh 1 or 2 days a week I won't be able to stop working and feed her constantly (I am a trader and work in a fast paced busy team). She is currently feeding around 4-5 times in the time that I would be away from her. She takes solids fairly well as she is on 3 meals a day but there are times where she just won't eat and wants to be breastfed. I have been advised that she may be fine to just have solids and water while I am away but I am obviously very uncomfortable leaving her hungry. I should mention she gladly takes water from a bottle but must feed herself.

What I have tried;
-about 15 different bottles, sippy cup, open cup, straw cup
-countless different teats
-freshly pumped, formula, pre-chilled breast milk, all different temperatures
-different positions (being held, not being held, lying down, sitting up)
-left her with my mum for 8 hours with no breast, she refused bottle the whole time and was starving when I picked her up as she would only have a bit of solids
-withheld breast for 12 hours each day for 3 days, again was starving by the time I breastfed her and she breastfed for 30 mins. She also had less wet nappies and just generally didn't seem happy. I obviously felt awful about this and was in floods of tears by the end.
-distracted her with TV, tried a calm quiet room
-different people feeding her

I'm sure I have tried other things that I can't remember. She will sometimes drink around an ounce if I force her and distract her but most of the time as soon as she realises the bottle has milk in it she just hits it away and shuts her mouth.

Please let me know anything that has worked for anyone as I am desperate if you can't tell!!

I had a friend in the same situation and ultimately she had to let her baby choose for herself (baby similarly chose to wait till she got home to feed). It sounds like you’ve tried everything you can.

Think about it this way. Baby can go to cow’s milk at 12 months and will be 8 months when you go back to work. So it’s just getting through these four months. Feed just before you leave if you can? And straight away on arrival (obviously). Work from home when you can. Take holidays when you can. Baby will survive and so will you.

2 of ours flat refused the bottle and the health visitor, with the last suggested we transfer to full cows milk early using a cup as she knew we'd had trouble with our first too. We just missed the the bottle stage.

We had a wedding to go to and left our first with my parents - they refused expressed milk all day from a bottle (except a tiny amount under protest) till we came home at 11 p.m. and fed immediately giving my parents the 'don't mess with me look' 🤣. He's leaving school shortly - and head and shoulders above me now. Suffice to say we now laugh about it.

Try not to stress (easy said than done). Go back to work - leave milk for her - she won't starve herself as she'll get liquid in her food too.