Hi all... I'm a dad looking for some help. Hope that I find it.
My 5 month old daughter has been on the 4-hour EASY for the past month-and-a-half or so. Her schedule is currently:
- 7-9am breast feed, then awake; 9-11am sleep
- 11-1pm breast feed, then awake; 1-3pm sleep
- 3-515pm breast feed, then awake; 515-6pm sleep
- 6-7pm bottle feed battle; 7-730 bath; 730-10pm sleep
- 10pm dream feed
...and that's the schedule she's been on for a while now. She wakes us up about once a night but that's about it.
So, here's my problem... that 6-7pm feeding is a battle. She used to be able to take about 2-2.5 ounces fairly well, take a burp break, and then she'd finish anywhere from another half ounce to an ounce before being done. In the last two to three weeks, however, the situation has gone to the point where she won't even drink a half ounce anymore - and that's with some serious battle to do so. And I know she's hungry because she does that baby lip smacking when I wake her up from the cat nap.
We've tried so many different methods to get her to feed:
- Location: baby seat in kitchen, new position with seat in kitchen, laying on floor mat, laying on changing table, cradled in mom's arms, laying in dad's lap
- Bottles: playtex slow nipple, playtex medium nipple, medela medium nipple
- Ambience: dead quiet, daddy humming, daddy talking, daddy singing, mommy making faces, daddy making faces, daddy rubbing baby's hands, different levels of light in the room, etc, etc, etc.
Additionally, after she refuses the bottle, she refuses the breast too - which happened this evening after trying the bottle for a half hour. The ONLY way that we were able to get her to do this evening's feeding off of the bottle was to find something ridiculously loud to capture her attention. Tonight, daddy was rattling this one toy so loud that I'm surprised neighbors didn't hear it. Only then did she take down the bottle.
And one more thing to note... dream feeds with the bottle work just fine! I can sneak into the room in the evenings and she takes the bottle down like nobody's business. What the heck is going on?!?
I don't want to make that distraction method a habit, of course, and we don't know what else to do. This is supposed to be daddy's time... bottle feed and bath time. However, I'm beyond the frustrated point here. I can't think of anything else to try. Please help.
