Stubborn Baby Won't Take Bottle

by Anonymous

I'm a new mother and a now back to work mom. My 9 week old daughter goes to my sister-in-laws house for daycare.

It's only her first week, but she's not eating more than 5 ozs or so when she's at daycare.

I was strictly breastfeeding before going back to work but she had been introduced to a bottle with formula before and done fairly well with it. Now she wants nothing to do with a bottle (formula or breastmilk) and cries most of the morning.

I was hoping to get some advice on what to do to help her while i'm not with her and able to breastfeed.

Find answers and comments below.

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Baby Help Line Response:

Hi Mom!

This must be so hard and stressful for you! Your situation is not uncommon - many babies refuses the bottle either right from the start or after a while. Now is a time to be creative!

For a start - have you reviewed our bottle feeding tips? It might be that there is something among those tips that you can pick up to help your girl accept bottle feeding. Here are some additional tips that a mom used. While these are for an older baby, there might still be some things you can apply.

If none of this helps or while you're working with your daughter to teach her to accept the bottle, consider other temporary solutions:

Spoon feeding her with a deep plastic spoon or a rubber-coated soft spoon might work. I've also talked with moms who used a large medicine dropper for the purpose.

Other ways to help your daughter is to have your sister in law try to dreamfeed her. This could both give her the nutrition she needs and make her used to the bottle without knowing.

If nothing at all works, is there any way you can talk to your employer and arrange for you to either work from home part time or take a long break to breastfeed your daughter. This would probably only be for a short period of time, until she learns to bottle feed, cup feed or whatever turns out to be the best solution for you.

I hope this gives you some ideas that you can use. I'd be very interested in hearing about your progress.

Paula

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