Help, my baby isn't taking bottles

[pitterwoo]

I go back to work on Monday and we are still struggling to get dd to take a feeding from the bottle.  She will take the bottle, but doesn't suck very much.  She will suck a few times and then take a really long pause, sometimes she will just start falling asleep.  

She will suck and not swallow so she of course coughs/gags and gets upset.  We're keeping her at a slightly elevated angle (vs totally laying back) and trying not to force-feed her.

Sometimes she cries, she seems frustrated about being offered the bottle, but will also cry when we take it away.  The whole thing is really hard.

We've been practicing with 1 or 2 oz at a time because it takes forever to get her to empty that much.  I've taken a bottle with me when we had to be out for a long stretch.  I ended up having to nurse her because she was so cranky and barely drank anything from the bottle despite having given it to her several times.

I know she's not going to starve while I'm away, and H is going to bring her down to my office over lunch time for the first week.  I just don't know what else we should be doing to help make this less traumatic.  She will be with H, not at daycare, so we don't have the experience with bottle feeding that a DC would.

We started bottles at 5 weeks, she will be 8 weeks tomorrow.  We've used 3 different bottles, both wide and narrow neck styles.  That doesn't seem to matter.

[rupertpenny]

Maybe try to hold her even more upright, like all the way sitting up. Also make sure the milk is warm enough and maybe taste it to see if there might be a lipase issue.

By baby is a bottle refuser but she didn't start that until 6 months. Before that she was very particular about milk temperature.

Just keep trying, hopefully she will probably get it eventually. In any case I'm sure she won't let herself starve.

[smock]

I'm dealing with the same thing--we started bottles when she was about 2 weeks old, and until she was 6 weeks she would happily take a bottle. Now? No way. Apparently around the 6 week mark babies start to realize they can have preferences, and she much prefers boob to bottle.

We've been trying the same thing as you--small feedings from the bottle, just to get her used to it. We aren't all the way there (the most she's taken from a bottle recently is maybe 1.5-2 ounces) but here's what has helped: if she gets fussy, we pop in a pacifier to calm her down. We also started using comotomo bottles, which are great because we can give the bottle a squeeze to squirt out some milk and remind her that she's supposed to be eating. We also found that feeding her in the bouncer helps a ton. She doesn't fuss, but she also still eats reeaaaally slowly.

So we're at the point where she'll take a small amount but it takes forever. I think she still hasn't quite learned (or re-learned?) how to suck milk out of a bottle. She'll make sucking and swallowing motions, but she's barely getting anything. I'm not sure how to help with that other than to keep trying. We did also get a faster flowing nipple just to get food into her a little faster, but it still takes at least 10-15 min. for her to eat an ounce, and sometimes a lot longer.

And hugs, because I know how stressful this is!

[Deleted]

Mine prefers if we have her laying in her carseat or somewhere rather than in our arms for the bottle if she is stressed. We also noticed that if we feed her the bottle before she really shows too many signs of being hungry, she takes it. But if we wait until she is hungry, she flips her shit.

[VillainV]

We had a bottle strike a few weeks ago, and it ended up being a lipase issue. My milk would go "soapy" smelling in about 24 hours in the fridge. Now I scald it if I know we won't use it the same day, and that seems to have fixed things. We also tried a few different kinds of bottles, feeding positions, milk temperatures, formula....it was frustrating.

Also, I think we fed him enough funky-tasting milk that he developed an aversion to bottles for a few days. After we started scalding, we had to dip our finger in the milk and let him taste it for a few days before he would take the bottle. But after he realized that the milk tasted okay he was fine.

[lg28]

I'm having the same issues - I just want to offer my empathy!! I get how stressful it is. We've tried a lot of the same things. I don't have to go back to work full time so it's not that urgent for me, but it is highly frustrating.

Good luck!

[Mushe]

My kid HATED the bottle when he started daycare at 4mo, and it took the first week to really get him to take them. Things that helped were heating the breast milk up to pretty warm, and kind of tickling his upper mouth with the bottle nipple to get him to take it.

I hope your kiddo starts taking the bottle! And you have my empathy; I know how stressful this is.

[vmars]

It took DS a while to take the bottle when I went back to work. He previously took to it fine, but I think he was mad I was gone. DH was home for the first 6 weeks after my maternity leave was over and he would take DS to me at lunch to nurse. Towards the end of his leave he began taking 2 3 oz bottles during the day. Now that he's in day care he still doesn't eat too much - only 11oz for a 10 hr day. It took a few different bottles and distraction techniques, but eventually he gave in.

[pitterwoo]

smock, that describes the situation exactly. I never heard of those bottles, so that's another option to check into.

I was wondering if the slow flow nipples were too slow. @thebteam we have the Dr. Browns stage 1 and it seems like she wasn't getting anything but I didn't try the next size. That does seem like part of the issue. Surprisingly the favorite so far is a cheapy nipple that came with some formula samples.

So I will keep looking into different nipples/bottles. I like the idea of trying to feed her in her seat as another position to try. I tasted the milk and it's fine, no funky taste.

It's helpful to know that others are working through this too. I would feel so much more confident about leaving her if this were better. It has to get better though.

[hymen]

DS1 started refusing bottles around 2.5 months, even though he took them fine before then. I went back to work when he was 4.5 months and he was still refusing the bottle then. He ate nothing his first 2 days at daycare, then took 2 ounces the third day, then 6 the fourth day. By the next week he was taking bottles fine. He just learned that when he was there, he had to drink from the bottle or he would be hungry. I was very stressed out about it beforehand, but it all worked out.