Baby is resisting bottle feeding - help please?
Our son is now 6 weeks old. We introduced the bottle at about 3 weeks, and he had zero problems for the first 3-4 days. Then, like some kind of light switch, he stopped taking it altogether and is still resisting it now.
Any advice on what we can do? Thanks.
Apr 14, 2019
Parent Replies
Hi, what worked for us was using a medicine dropper (the biggest one we could find at the pharmacy) and just squirting the milk (gently!) into our baby's mouth. Soon she figured out how to suck on the medicine dropper. We did that for a couple of days until she learned that she could get food from something other than me, and then she was fine with the bottle. I think it helped that we had her grandma do it - someone besides me or her dad. Good luck! I know this is stressful, I wish you the best.
Same thing happened to our son! He started fussing at the bottle after initially taking it without a problem. We just kept trying, offering a bottle a day. He was more likely to take it from me than my husband, but he gradually got better about that. Weirdly, it helped a lot when my husband and I switched shirts one day -- I put on his, and he put on mine. My husband held the baby in his lap while I held the bottle. After that, it got easier and easier. By the time I went back to work (around 4 months), he took bottles all the time without an issue.
I think for us, it had less to do with the bottle itself and more to do with the fact that he just went through a super fussy period from weeks 5-10 or so. But it got better!
Hi there - I had this problem with my son. He actually never took a bottle for the first 4 months of his life until he went to daycare. I tried it all. Every different bottle, different nipples with different flow rates, different temps for the milk, having another caregiver feed him, leaving for almost an entire day, etc etc. We also hired a lactation consultant with experience in this (Serena Meyer) who was somewhat helpful. I worried about this quite a bit until the day I went back to work and of course at daycare he had no problem and has had no problems since. At the time I had plenty of people tell me not to worry, that he would get it eventually, and it didn't really help me at the time, but now on the other side of it I wish I hadn't worried so much! Give the above recommendations a try or take a break and try again in a few weeks if you are in a position to do so. Good luck!
We are in the same boat...Son took daily bottles fine since 3 weeks until 10 weeks, when he suddenly realized mom is the source of food and comfort and started refusing bottles, even from mom. He is now 11 weeks old and we are just offering a daily bottle without upsetting him too much. We also got the big syringes in case he still doesn't take bottles when I go back to work in early May...
Good luck!
We had the same problem with our daughter and tried all kinds of expert advice, including me leaving the house for 8 hours hoping she would get hungry enough. Nothing worked and we were panicked because I had to go back to work. Finally I decided to try associating the bottle with breast feeding. I would hold the bottle up to her face while I breast fed. After 2-3 times doing that, I would just slip the nipple of the bottle (with about an ounce of milk in it) into her mouth for a few seconds. Then, each time I would just try to keep her on the bottle a little longer, sometimes switching between breast and bottle. When she could stay on the bottle for a minute or two, we had my husband hold her while I fed her switching from breast to bottle. Finally, I switched her over to bottle, with my husband holding her, and left the room. She kept feeding. The whole process took about two full days.