Hi everyone,
Your thoughts as always would be much appreciated! I've read a few of the helpful posts here, but thought I could use your opinion on our specific situation as well
Although our LO was exclusively breastfed, we introduced a bottle early on, as soon as breastfeeding was well established, as Tracy suggests. My husband always did the DF with a bottle of my expressed milk, and she always drank much more this way (plus gave me a nice break). At around 3 months, I returned to work on a part time basis, so most of the time she would only need 1 (or 2 at the most) milk feeds in my absence. She would always take the bottle from my mother who took care of her, apart from the random occasional hunger strike. She went through a few spells of rejecting the bottle, but then returned to it with no problem like it never happened. A few weeks ago we started introducing formula, which she drank quite happily, when my frozen BM supplies began to finish. We mixed formula with BM at the beginning and then gradually left just formula. She didn't seem to notice any difference, so we thought we were through the transition successfully!
2 weeks ago this suddenly changed. She is absolutely refusing the bottle, at all times of day, regardless of who is offering it, or what milk the bottle contains (tried a couple of brands, plus expressed milk). She will scream at the sight of the bottle, before you even touch her lips with it. It's not as if she tries and gets frustrated with the nipple of something... We have tried walking her and offering the milk in a sippy cup (which she uses happily for water), but as soon as she realized there was milk in it, she refused it. She will simply not drink any milk from a bottle, until I get home and then she will take the breast like there is no tomorrow! One day she waited for 7 hours...
She is eating small quantities of solids now, so it's not that she will starve while I'm away, but it's not good for her to go without milk for so long. Plus it means that I can't be away for any of the crucial milk feed hours, like bed time.
Any ideas? I am very confused, because she used to have no problem at all and now it's like she has suddenly chosen the breast over the bottle permanently. I want to continue breast feeding while I am at home (early morning, late afternoon, bed times etc), but also be confident that she will drink milk while I'm at work or elsewhere!
Help
