Our 4-month old son has always had trouble with feedings, almost since birth/ He was diagnosed with reflux and he's on some reflux medicine called Axid. His feedings always have involved a bit of a fight. Anyway, following a 3-hour schedule, we eventually got him to be able to eat about 4 ounces consistently and could sometimes push him to 6 ounces on occasion (maybe one to two feedings a week). He started daycare two weeks ago and we noticed that our daily reports from our care provider shoed that he was eating 6-7 ounces at every feeding and those feedings were sometimes as close together as 2 hours! When I asked, she says that she just feeds him as normal and he just tears through a bottle, adding insult to injury saying, "well, sometimes he takes a while, 15-20 minutes... but most of the time he's through it very quickly..." Our typical feedings take at least 45 minutes!!! In the evenings and on the weekends, he is back to eating 2-4 ounces at a feeding and fighting us tooth and nail through it all...
She says, "That boy is going to eat you out of house and home!" I truly, truly wish that he would... I'm so tired of feeling like the bad guy, as we've been since he's very young.
The Daycare uses the same bottles as us, with the same nipples. They use the same formula and in general follow the same feeding steps. She says to wait until he's "telling you" he's hungry, which I think that we do, but he just doesn't want to eat, EVER! The pediatrician says to just wait till he's hungry and he'll eat, but we've gone through that waiting game and have gone as much as 9 hours with him not being hungry at all... and then reluctantly taking only 3 ounces afterward.
I know that he's hungry with us because since he's been at daycare he's sleeping great at night but over the course of a weekend, he's waking up 3-4 times a night by Sunday night.
In general, he's a very happy baby who smiles all the time, even when he isn't eating, but going on four months of fighting at virtually every meal is really starting to take its toll on the parents (no doubt to the baby too...) .
We've tried different bottles, different nipples, changing the formula concentration, putting him in quiet places, putting him in active places, singing to him, rocking him, not singing to him, not rocking him, I've even resorted to buying the same bottle water that the daycare uses rather than tap water... all to no avail.
To be honest, I'm feeling like a miserable parent if I can't even feed my son to his satisfaction. Does anyone have any ideas of what might be going on? I'm very scared that the fighting during feeds has broken his trust of us with feedings, but am somewhat relieved that he's like that with a lot of people who aren't his daycare provider.
Somebody please, please help. I'd try anything at this point...
