Baby screaming at breast but will take bottle

[jessmke]

We struggled the last few weeks to get my 8 week old to take a bottle. I am breastfeeding, but I want her to be able to take a bottle of expressed milk in case I have to be away from her. For the last week she will take a bottle, a bit reluctantly, and will only drink about an ounce from it. We have been giving her a bottle once every day or two to get her used to it. Well the last three days she will scream if I try to put her on the boob, but if I offer her a bottle she will take it. The weird thing is at night and in the morning she will nurse fine, it's just the afternoon and evening where she hates my boobs. What is going on!?! I don't want to stop with the bottles because it's important to me that we have a back up plan in case I can't get to her in time for a feed, but I don't know if I should continue to give her the bottle if she is starting to prefer it to the breast.

 

[noon_child]

Is she screaming before she even tries to latch or only once she has latched does she reject the boob?

It does sound like preference for the bottle and either she likes the faster flow (which will be true of your breasts at night and in the morning) or when she's sleepy and relaxed she not so bothered.

I'd treat it like a nursing strike if I were you (Others may have some good advice if they've been through it), so you want to try to concentrate on retaining that mother baby closeness and relaxation - you can't force her to feed but you can create an environment where her feeding reflexes kick back in - so try going back to skin to skin, wear her in a sling, or stay in bed with her. Keep talking to her in calm tones, sing to her, whatever you think will chill her out. Make sure your breasts are accessible to her. If she gets very upset with hunger and won't latch, try offering a small amount to calm her down (from a spoon, cup or syringe can break the preference for bottles, but it can be tricky to do frequently) but not a full feed, then when she's calm she might take the breast.

It seems a shame to sacrifice breastfeeding for the possibility you might need to bottle feed her at some future time. As she gets older she'll be able to cope better with delays to her feeds, so you don't need to stress too much if you haven't got plans to be away overnight or go back to work. Even babies who do take bottles from mum, sometimes refuse them when mum isn't there because they miss her, not just the milk.

Hope this helps a bit.

 

[6lilpigs]

All excellent advice above Especially the part that if the bottle is being introduced just incase you may need it and not as preparation for work maybe. One of mine did similar and rejected the boob completely for the faster flow and I was gutted for a long time Can the bottle be put aside for another month or so??

 

[RaquelDee]

My bub went through a phase of doing this with her evening feeds as my let-down is slower at the end of the day and she just didn't have the patience to wait for it when she was tired. Of course, her coming off and screaming just exacerbated the problem as it would make me tense and therefore let-down was even slower. Our solution was for me to hand her over to my husband when she started fussing, and he could calm her down while I would pump to trigger a let-down. I sometimes struggle to get a let-down with a pump, but having her crying certainly helped do the trick! Then once she was calm and the milk was flowing, she would latch fine and just get on with things. It happened pretty much every evening for a couple of weeks, and then stopped being a problem. I think I started to relax a bit more, which helped.

If you want to continue breastfeeding I would probably persist with offering the breast when this happens and avoid giving the bottle. I sympathise with you with regard to wanting to have the flexibility of being able to offer a bottle, some babies seem to be able to switch without a problem, whereas others really struggle with it. If you are thinking of needing bottles fairly far into the future (say when she is six months plus) then there are other options like cup feeding, so bottles aren't always an absolute necessity if you need to be away.

 

[jessmke]

Thanks for the replies. I am going to put the bottles away for a while at least until we get back on track with breastfeeding. I'm not sure it's an issue related the bottle being 'easier', we use Nuk bottles so she has to push the nipple against the roof of her mouth and suck in order to get milk to flow from the bottle, so she does have to work for the milk. It also takes her at least 30 min to drink 1-2 oz from the bottle, whereas a typical feed from the boob is only about 10-15 min, so she isn't guzzling it from the bottle.

She will latch on my nipple and suck, but she starts freaking out as soon as my milk lets down (which usually takes less than 30 seconds regardless of the time of day). I thought maybe my letdown was too strong so I've tried expressing off the first bit of milk and then relatching her but that doesn't help.

Can a growth spurt create short term feeding disturbances? I'm pretty sure she's growing because she woke up to feed 6 times last night, which is twice as much as she has ever fed in the night before.

There are a handful of days this summer where I know I will have to be gone from her for 8-12 hours, so I thought it would be better to get her used to the bottle early so it's not such a shock for her to feed without me around later on, but it appears that plan has now backfired. It's going to be boob or bust for this kid for the next little while, no more bottle!

 

[noon_child]

Can a growth spurt create short term feeding disturbances? I'm pretty sure she's growing because she woke up to feed 6 times last night, which is twice as much as she has ever fed in the night before.

Yes, growth spurts for us were constant scream, latch, scream, latch, scream. We had latch issues though and she was just exhausted and sick of not being able to get adequate milk. I don't know what they are like for babies that latch well

 

[jessmke]

Today there were no pacifiers (which wasn't a big deal, she's not big on the pacifier anyways) and no bottles. She has forgiven my right boob of any injustices, but is still harbouring a grudge with my left boob. We basically spent the entire day naked together in the living room and we're going to have family bath time tonight. She seems to have a cold and is a bit congested, I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the nursing strike. I had the boob on offer to her all day and she nursed quite frequently from the right (but only for very short periods of time) and a couple times I was able to switch her to the left and she would nurse a bit from that side too. If she started fussing when I offered the boob I just bounced her on my knee or took her away from the boob and patted her back so there was no pressure for her to nurse. I feel like we are already on our way back to our normal breastfeeding selves. Damn the lure of the bottle! Now that we know she can drink from a bottle we will only be giving it to her when/if necessary instead of on a regular basis.

On a side note, for the first time ever she was unable to initiate a let down with nursing, it's usually almost instantaneous. I was feeling extremely stressed out because the dog had just had a seizure, so I am hoping it was just stress and not something that will happen frequently.

 

[noon_child]

Yes it was probably stress. Suckling stimulates oxytocin which controls letdown but the stress hormone cortisol blocks oxytocin, so nothing to do with your baby at all really, they just suck and wait for it all to happen!

By the time it gets to summer your LO might be old enough to try a sippy cup, or be adding some food alongside her milk so it might not be too much of a problem if she doesn't like bottles.