Baby rejecting expressed milk

[AnneD]

Help. My 14-month-old is rejecting expressed milk. I pump at work and keep the milk chilled until the next day for her to have while I'm in work. They've tried all sorts of bottles and sippies and open cups, no go. Spoon, no go. They've tried it warm, cool, straight out of the fridge, no go. She takes a sip, pushes it away, starts crying for me. What do I do? I can't come home to bf her at lunch time. She never took formula and she refuses cow's milk. I let her suck whenever she wants overnight, but not sure how much milk she actually gets (if any) as my supply is going down.

 

[kung_pao mama]

I'm sorry I'm not much help. But we are going through the same thing with my 3 month old and I thought i would share what we are trying... I've been feeding him 1 bottle myself in the evenings and he usually does a lot better when I am giving him the bottle. We are hoping that with a little practice with mama, he will get better at taking it while i am away. Good Luck!

 

[Shanoa]

Have you tasted the milk? Does it taste soapy?

My LO refused my frozen breast milk or any milk I had stored in the fridge for longer than about 8 hours because I have an excess of lipase in my breastmilk. Unfortunately this means that I now have to scald the milk before storing it. Scalding it deactivates the lipase. Apparently it kills off some nutrients but it is still better than formula.

I hope you don't have this issue becuse it is a bit of a faff trying to scald each batch of expressed milk

 

[Kelskiii]

I have to warm my breast milk for LO to drink it

 

[AnneD]

Thank you all for replying.

She will not take expressed milk from me, never has. Apparently because she knows I've got "the real thing".

I've tasted the milk several times and it doesn't taste funny to me, just incredibly sweet. I know that it tastes awful after it's been frozen for a while, I had to bin a whole freezer's worth of milk when she was younger. I wonder if she could possibly taste the most minute difference when the milk is expressed and not straight from the breast?

We've tried all sorts of temperatures, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. The same with cow's milk, she just pushes it away.

Thanks again to everyone who replied xx

 

[MommyJogger]

Thank you all for replying.

She will not take expressed milk from me, never has. Apparently because she knows I've got "the real thing".

I've tasted the milk several times and it doesn't taste funny to me, just incredibly sweet. I know that it tastes awful after it's been frozen for a while, I had to bin a whole freezer's worth of milk when she was younger. I wonder if she could possibly taste the most minute difference when the milk is expressed and not straight from the breast?

We've tried all sorts of temperatures, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. The same with cow's milk, she just pushes it away.

Thanks again to everyone who replied xx

Sorry- I know it's been several days, but I just wanted to ask: have you tasted your milk fresh and then tasted it as it would be given to her? If it tastes awful after being frozen for a while, I'd put my money on it tasting 'different' after your normal storage without actually tasting bad to you. Have you ever just scalded a day's worth and offered that to see if it makes a difference? J refused expressed milk, too. It can be incredibly frustrating.
We kept offering a milk substitute in a sippy at meal times. He would ignore it and consistently choose water over it for a really long time, but eventually realized it wasn't poison. Once he was used to taking the almond milk out of the sippy, he was happy taking expressed milk from the sippy. I would keep making cow's milk available. They change their minds so quickly sometimes, it might be worth it to catch when she decides she's amenable to milk-type-product from containers.