Oh no! My Baby Won’t Take a Bottle!

You had all these ideas about how you would breast feed your baby for those first few weeks after you brought them home. Your pediatrician had recommended that you wait 3 or 4 weeks before you started bottle feeding, so that your breastfeeding relationship was well established. It’s all going so well! But, you had planned to start introducing a bottle to your baby so that you could go back to work….and so that everyone in your family could take turns feeding the baby and snuggling with them.

Things went really well the first few times the baby was fed this way! You did all the research about the perfect bottle and the best nipples to mimic the breast. It looked as though you were going to be home free with your plans! And then….

Baby refuses to take a bottle. What could possibly be wrong? Try not to panic. Let’s have a reset and start from the beginning. Or, let’s say you NEVER got your baby to take a bottle at all? Either way, the situation is the same. Here are a few things we recommend if your baby refuses a bottle feeding for you.

DON’T GIVE UP!

It’s ok if this doesn’t work the way you thought. Have patience. Take a breath and get back in there and try bottle feeding again. Try to resist the urge to order every bottle and every nipple on Amazon in hopes that you will find the exactly perfect fit. This might be a solution, but it might not be. In the process of changing things up repeatedly, you might just make matters worse. Stick with what you have and try bottle feeding again.

LET SOMEONE ELSE GIVE THE BOTTLES:

The baby associates you and your smell with breastfeeding and comfort close to your heart…they learn that you feed and soothe them in that way. If you try to bottle feed them, with a different nipple and maybe not holding them in the same way…sometimes, the baby might refuse this because it’s confusing. Have your partner or another family member do all the bottle feeding and you stick to just nursing at the breast. For now. This won’t necessarily always be a requirement.

GET CREATIVE and BE PERSISTANT:

Holding the baby differently might make a difference. Hold them sitting fully upright will give you a chance to also control how much the baby drinks at a time and you can do a form of ‘pace feeding’ which will make sure baby doesn’t gulp the milk and get too much air. Take a walk with the baby outside or go for a car ride before you introduce try bottle feeding again. Sing to the baby and then introduce the bottle again. Get creative! Try to introduce the bottle BEFORE they’re screaming at the top of their lungs from hunger. Catch them just as they start showing some of those cute little hunger cues like rooting and sucking on their knuckles. Tickle the babies’ top lip with the bottle nipple so that they open their mouth wide for you, before you get back in there and try bottle feeding again. This will all keep the stress level lower for both you and baby, which will make it much more likely to find success. The best thing you can do is not let yourself get stressed. Success with bottle feeding will be yours!

If you need help with infant feeding, check out our website to book an appointment with our resident Infant Feeding Specialist. #annarborpostpartumdoula #michiganfamilydoulas