5 month old baby starts to reject drinking from bottles

[Dal]

Hi all

My 5 mth old baby used to have no problems nursing from me directly or drinking from the milk bottles.
But recently, I realised that he is beginning to reject the bottle.
Though he may have last drank more than 4 hours ago, he merely drinks 1-2 ounces from the bottle and starts to bite on the teat and refuses to drink any further.
I then offer my breast and then he continues to drink.
I am worried that by the time I want to wean him off from direct latching on, he will refuse to drink from the bottles.
Will there be a such problem or am I worrying too much?

 

[JennyB]

Nobody can say what "will" happen to your baby because they are all so different. But I do know that it's quite common for some babies to start rejecting the bottle at around your baby's age. For some babies it is just a phase, for others more permanent. At least at your baby's age then milk is a bit less the centre of their universe than it is a few months earlier.

By that I mean, from my own experience: my eldest daughter never took a bottle - well, she did a bit at first but when I started going back to work (after 6mo) is when she started refusing it entirely. Some days I would go out to work and find she had only drunk 50ml all day and very little solids (at around 8mo). But she had been quite happy playing with her toys - she was certainly very happy to see me and my breasts but the lack of them hadn't ruined her day. I didn't work every day so this wasn't a problem for us.

Also the older they get the more likely you can wean them to a cup, or replace some breastfeeds with solid foods. I stopped breastfeeding so gradually that my baby hardly noticed.

 

[nikimom]

my daughter is only 10 weeks - she used to get reli fussy on my breast and would waited for the top up bottle of expressed milk, but starting from last week she started to push the teat out when i gave her the bottle. and its even worse this week, she would cry and cry and cry when i give her the bottle, and when i pull it out she turns her head and bite my nipple ... i dont know what to do with this...reli frustrating cos she never empties my breast even when i feed her directly, thats why i have to express teh milk after she finishes and top up with the expresses milk in a bottle, now that she doesnt want the bottle, i dont know how to feed her

 

[Dal]

Hi nikimom

For me, I also used to express my milk after I feed my baby directly becos I felt that my breasts were still full and I was worried that my milk supply will deteriorate if I dont clear my breast. However, I have stopped expressing after feeding now as I find that this is double work and I really dont have the luxury of time to do that as I do not have any helper.

I simply allow my baby to drink as much as he wants and stops as and when he wants (my baby is five mth old and he sometimes takes as short as 5 min a feed!). What I do is that I give the same breast at the same timing every day. Somehow the breasts know when to produce milk as I dont feel full in the other "unused" breast anymore.

As for my baby's refusal to take the bottle, I realised that he may be teething as he also uses his gums to bite my nipple when he doesn't want to drink anymore. But he is able to drink from the bottle when I wake him up at about 1030pm for his dream feed. I think that when babies are hungry, they will drink milk from any form!

For your case, since your baby is only 10 weeks old, i think it is very unlikely that she is teething. I always hear about the problem of nipple confusion faced by babies, but really not sure how true it is.

Why not you try feeding her directly and dont top up with any expressed milk and see how long she can last between feeds? If she can last about 3 hours, I believe that she is consuming a sufficient amount of feed.

However, I personally feel that by the same you decide to wean her off breastfeeding or direct nursing, you may have to start exposing her to bottles again gradually.