Breastfeeding Question - Oldsmar, FL

N.:

sometimes babies get mixed messages... if you are pushing the bottle she may feel that it you do not want to bf here...it is also important to let babies lead, she knows when she needs to eat. she is at a age where it is easy for her to become distrated with other things and put eating off.

my suggestion would be to give her the lead back.. let her tell you when she wants to breastfeed and be ready and willing.

P., RLC, IBCLC
Pres. Lactation Support Group, Inc
www.lactationsupportgroup.com

I would say that if you can, drop the bottle for a while. It's more important that she BF for now, to keep your milk supply up. If you breastfeed her on demand, she will get enough, so don't worry about that. This age, or slightly older - around 4 months - is when babies first really start noticing their surroundings, too. They can get very distractable and want to look around instead of eating. Try feeding her in a quiet dark boring room and that may help. Also, if you're feeding her on a schedule it may be that she is not hungry when you feed her. Let her take the lead and "ask" for food when she wants it. I usually put my son on my lap with his head near my breast and if he opens his mouth and seems interested, I feed him. If he smiles or turns away to look at something else, I don't push it - I just try again in another 30 minutes or so.

Yeah I agree with easing up on the bottle. Also you can do skin-to-skin contact with her. She will be so close to you where she will smell the milk and latch back on to the breast. It may take a few moments and trys but it will work. Congratulations on making it this far with breast feeding!

Make sure that you, the mom are not the one giving your baby the bottle. That is when babies get confused. Also, I would try to make sure that you are putting breastmilk in the bottle and still nursing frequently or pumpimg milk as often as you would be nursing to keep your milk supply consistent. As you know there really is nothing better for you or the baby:).
Gretchen

Hi, N..
I agree with some of the advice below for you to hold off feeding with bottles for a while, since bottle is much easier for your baby to eat from than breast.
I once made a mistake of feeding him breastmilk in a bottle myself (my partner was usually the one who fed him with bottle and I always stayed in the other room, but one time there was a phone call for him while he was feeding and I took over with the bottle), and we had the hardest time putting him back on my breast after that. We held off from bottle for a while and when my son refused to eat from breast, we just did not feed him. He eventually gave in and now he eats from both bottle and breast with no problem. (He eats from bottle during the day when I am at work and from breast at night and weekends. He usually gets really excited to eat from breast now.)
Good luck!

Hopefully by now you have already resolved your problem, but I thought I'd throw in that when my first daughter was 3 months old she went on a nursing strike. I was just about to go back to work and my mother-in-law had just arrived from abroad to "help out." I guess I was a little stressed out (hum... maybe stressed was an understatement). I truly believe my baby could sense something and was somehow rejecting the boob for that reason. She would literally scream in the boob's presence! She barely drank a bottle during that time. This went on for a couple of days when I took her to the pediatrician in a panic since she had had only 2 ounces the whole morning and afternoon. On the way home she fell asleep and upon awakening was a very hungry little girl nursed like a champ. I figured out that if I got to her when she was sleepy and just waking up for a nap she would nurse with no problem. She then proceeded to nurse 12 times within the next 24 hours. By the next day we were back to business as usual. Take care.

Hi N.. Perhaps you can get ahold of a lactation consultant. But I believe that it is much easier for a baby to feed from a bottle than from the breast. They actually have to work to get their milk from the breast. So it could be that baby is just getting lazy on the breast because she knows mama will just give her a bottle and it will be so much easier for her.

Perhaps call a hospital near you and ask them for the number to their lactation consultants and see what they say.

Good Luck

Hi N.,

Maybe you can pump your milk instead and continue using the bottle since she seems to have the hang of it. I think it's a good sign since most breastfed baby's have a hard time switching over to the bottle.

Contact the La Leche League. They are very, very helpful. You can check out there website at www.lalecheleague.org, I believe. You can get the phone number of a local person who will talk to you over the phone for free. Good luck!