Bottle feeding difficulty

[Jen Riedeburg]

Our almost 6 mo old, Theo, has been hating the bottle for about one month now.  It seemed to come on quickly and now that we are having to push him to eat, it is getting much worse. He is on the Avent bottle sytem...I noticed someone else on this site had issues with Avent and another woman who had this issue was told by the public that it must be reflux -- but does this come on later like this?  He sucks enough for 2 oz then just wants to give up.. I am going crazy and know I need ti relax but it definately isn't teething and I doi not know what to try next.  Could it also be that he simply doesn't like the taste of the Soy Formula he is on?
Thanks so much for any help!

[Tammy: Ethan & Kaden's Mom]

What size nipples is he using?  My ds went through this, he would eat about 4 oz, and then give up.  I still had him on the slowest flow nipples.  The minute I switched to the next size up, he went back to eating normally.  He does occasionally not want the whole bottle, but I figure that is normal.  But I think my ds was getting frustrated trying to suck and it not coming out as fast as he wanted!

Don't know if that is your issue, but perhaps something to think about!

[Deb_in_oz]

hi - i definitely would make sure you are on at least a medium flow teat.  also - please don't push too hard on the feeding - i have just gone through this and our daughter ended up with major fears of the bottle because we started pushing her to eat when she was fighting it ... we ended up at a speech patholigist helping her feel relaxed with the bottle again - if you push them it only gets worse.

when your DS resists the feed/ arches his back / pulls away, take a break and let him play for a little while and then re-offer it.  if he is really resistent then don't force him, he WILL eat when he is hungry.  it is so hard to end a feed when you know they "should" take more, but you can end up with worse problems if you force feed (like we did). It is imposrtant to keep the feed happy and relaxed and not engage in a battle.

another tip - the speech pathologist we saw said that AVENT bottles are the number one bottle used by people she sees with bottle feeding problems and recommends getting rid of them.  says they are too large/wide a teat and the plastic is generally too hard for most babies. if the faster teat does not work i would try another brand of bottles - i use Pigeon but not sure if those are available in the states. these are apparently very similar to a breast feeding action as when a baby has the breast in their mouth a woman's nipple elongates, so a bottle teat that is long and thin is better than a wide one.  HTH

[alligirl]

Hi all!  I'm gonna bump this over to the bottle feeding forum....I think it might fit better there.  Even though you've gotten some great answers already, you might get even more.

Hope that's okay!  Just trying to get you some more help!

[Mariek]

You should definitley give the the next flow teat a try (my DD did exactly the same when she was ready to move to the faster ones and as soon as we changed them she was fine).

She also had a problem with the avent bottles and once we'd found a different one which she liked the avent ones went into the cupboard never to be brought out again!

love

[opp2]

I agree with the others. My dd used Avent from her second week combined with bf and did really well. My ds on the other hand has a really hard time with Avent and does better with Gerber/NUK.