3 month old refusing the breast

[LittleNikki]

Let me start by saying that my son has been totaly breast fed from birth (he has an occasional bottle of expressed milk) and is now 14 weeks old. He has had a dummy from quite young and it never caused any nipple confusion. So anyway today he has been refusing the breast and kicking/arching his back if I try to feed him even when he seems hungry, after about 5/6 hours of very little to no feeding I tried him with a bottle of expressed milk and he drank down 5/6 oz as if he had never been fed. Has anyone got any experiance/advice for this?

 

[sept2010]

Does he suck for a while and then start fussing? Maybe your milk is not coming out as quick as baby would like?
Only thing i could think of im afraid. There is such things as nursing strikes aswell. Maybe read up on that and see if you think its that?

 

[LittleNikki]

He doesn't even latch on just starts screaming. I just managed to get him to feed from me before he went to be after about 10 hours refusing the breast. I think it may be a strike, just hard when I can see he is hungry just wont feed

 

[sept2010]

Keep offering him the breast regularly. Im sure he will pick up again with the feeds

 

[Rachel_C]

Could he be teething? Feeding can make the gums hurt I think. Bottle feeding is different so might not hurt the same.

 

[JessPape]

Id say take him to the chiro and offer the breast don't offer a bottle he wont starve. Try different positions if you cant get him to a chiro. Sometime they need an adjustment cause they are in discomfort so he associates that positon with pain

 

[patch2006uk]

Nipple confusion can present any time, so I'd personally cut the bottles and dummies and go back to basics-skin to skin, lots of offering, concentrate on positioning.