I am 33 weeks pregnant and am still bottle feeding M (15 months old). Now when I say still bottle feeding her, I am literally holding her bottle and entertaining her while she lies on the floor and I hold toys in front of her to distract her so that she'll drink her milk. It's been this way since she was about 6 months old. I ended up pumping during daytime feeds so that I could distract her and bottle feed as she would pop on and off the breast and it was affecting my supply.
It's not that she doesn't like milk. I warm it up for her, and she'll sign for milk first thing in the morning. There is the odd morning where she'll be no problem, and I'll just hold up a book for her to look at, maybe 2, and she'll drink 8 oz. without much of a problem. But most times it takes a lot more than that. Tonight I probably went through 20 toys/books. I give her a bottle when she wakes up in the morning, and about 1.5 hours after dinner, just before bedtime. Here are other things I've tried:
-giving her the bottle to hold herself (she'll take a sip or two, then play with the bottle, shake it, and squirt milk everywhere)
-giving it to her in a sippy cup (she'll drink water no problem, but with milk, she will hardly touch it)
-give it to her in a smoothie (same thing, she'll have a bit and that's it)
-give it to her with meals (much prefers water)
-use it in her meals with cereal, sauces etc. (I try but there's no way I can get more than a few oz. in each day this way)
I realize that milk is not essential, as long as they are getting their fat, calcium and vitamin D from other sources, but she's not the greatest eater either, and although she loves cheese and will eat minigo yogurt without much complaint, I'd like her to just learn to drink milk independently, preferable before I have another baby to look after!
Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated. The biggest challenge is that she doesn't sit still. Even for meals, dinner is the only meal she'll actually sit down for 10+ mins., the others I have to distract her to get her to eat anything significant.
