Won't give up the boob

Shabadu

My baby will be 7 months old in a fortnight, and he's still getting 90% of his milk from me. I wouldn't mind, but i've gone back to work and he hates bottles. Only gets about 1oz twice a day from the poor exasperated creche ladies. As a result, he's feeding constantly in the evenings and waking up about a million times a night. This is a big change as i had him sleeping right through at 6 weeks. I'm worried that he's getting enough as i think my milk productions falling off. I've tried him with 5 different teats, all of which he hates. Have tried expressing breast milk. My mother made me not feed him all day once, needles to say it was the worst day of our lives and i definitely do not have the constitution to starve my baby. He won't take a cup. He now has 6 teeth and has taken to biting... please help? It's really getting to be a strain on my relationship with my boyfriend aswell, as we're both wrecked from the teething and the hunger and the just having figured out how to shout. He's so much fun and i love him so much but i feel like he hates me for putting him in creche and trying to give him bottles.

Paddyo

Hi There

We had a very similar problem recently. Our 6 month old girl would not take to the bottle. Tried different bottles, teats, formulas, cups, expressed milk etc...

We are probably luckier than you as my wife is a stay at home mum, with 2 other kids also.

Our baby was taking 3 meals a day also and the bood when ever she wanted it - luckily not too much at night.

However we wanted to wean her off the boob. A few months earlier she did take expressed milk, when my wife would go out, but when we wanted to wean her she refused point blank.

The advice we were given was not to give her any boob. It may take 2 days but she would take to the bottle. She would still be getting goodness and liguid from the meals she was eating.

We decided to go for it over the Christmas holidays and lo and behold it worked. It took about a day and a half of trying with tears all around. My wife found it really difficult because she felt she had it iin her power to stop all of the crying by just giving the boob. We persisted and now we have no problem.

I hope this helps.

Best of luck.

Paddyo

Victor

Soem deprivation might go a long way. Orphans and kids in big families tend not to have the fussiness of only children and kids from small families, if they don't eat, they don't get fed. Have you had any success with a bottle, even with your own milk?

Kernel32

We were advised by a nurse to start our son on a bottle once he was between 6 and 8 weeks old, just every so often so he would take one as needed. He was primarily breast fed but by doing that early on he would also take expressed milk from a bottle. It actually worked out really well because we took him to my parents in Ireland for an extended visit when he was very young and Ireland seems to have a problem with breast feeding, no facilities in any shopping malls or stores. In the US it is so well accepted now that any decent sized store or mall has facilities for breast feeding mothers.

Shabadu

I'm just going to tough it out until i get a weekend to wean him completely. Just going to have to be brave and not give in to breast feeding him. I feel so bad though, he doesn't understand and i can't explain to him why i'm doing it.

Victor

Originally posted by Kernel32
Ireland seems to have a problem with breast feeding

Not quite. The USA has a problem with breasts* and hides them away, much more so than boob-deprived Ireland. Many mothers breast feed in company, although I was rather bemused to see this happen in (a) middle of Grafton Street (b) front window of Eddie Rockets.

I've even seen a woman do it discretely on a bus, by her simply being forward thinking enought to wear suitable clothing and drape a baby blanket in the right place.

*http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145293

Yavvy

Jr.Shabadu, you have a tough problem ...
have you introduced solids yet ?
have you tried a sippy cup ?
our baby is 6mths and she doesnt really like to drink expressed milk from the bottle, but she likes the sippy cup, however she does chew milk from a bottle....takes her ages but she thinks its great fun.
The http://www.lalecheleague.org/ might be able to help
and breastfeeding.com is useful too.
Please let us know how you got on with the weaning..very interested.


Ireland does have an Issue with breast feeding, They dont do it enough. but my wife breast feeds everywhere. shopping centres., buses, resturants, parks, streets, the zoo...and never a word or a second look. ... BTW, nice feeding facalities in The stephens green SC, and privater rooms in Blanch SC..the Square has a room too...but its not very nice.

The US has a similar problem with too many babys being formula fed ( from birth) but They are also amazingly ignorant to breastfeeding mothers feeding in the open ( or so it seems to me) Burger king had to back track recently when a mother was asked to stop feeding or leave...now, they encourage it, nothing to do with the fact thousands mo breastfeeding mothers were going to do a mass feeding in loads of their restraunats.

Maybe we have been lucky that nobody has taken offence of us feeding in the open yet... but I cant understand how anyone could ? I honestly cant think of one reason to be offended by breastfeeding.

kelle

Kernel32 is so right, Ireland really has a problem with breastfeeding. My second baby was born with a cleft palate that wasn't discovered until she was 4 days old (it was only on her soft palate not her lip). It explained why she couldn't breastfeed probably. So I had to start bottlefeeding her much to my dismay. It would take her an hour to drink even 1oz of formula. But I continued to express milk and she would drink that from the bottle very quickly! So with great determination I persevered with breastfeeding and at 8 weeks old her "suck" improved and she was finally able to breastfeed exclusively. That day was for me like winning the lottery!
But the attitude of others really annoyed me - Why didn't I stick with formula? How did I know she was getting enough? I should be thinking of my other child who was probably "deprived" as a result of my determination. Would you like to go to the bedroom to feed her? Funnily enough I never got asked those questions by non-Irish people!
But the results were excellent. Her nostrils, inflamed from bringing up milk constantly (symptom of cleft palate), suddenly cleared, and all rashes dissappeared. I was told this was only in my imagination!!!
I continued up until she was 7 months old and then had the same problem as Jr. Shabadu. Like the others have said, deprivation is the only way. When they're hungry enough they'll drink anything!! I wish you luck, Jr. shabadu. It's so hard on you, and makes returning to work doubly difficult. I actually introduced milk to her in a drinking cup (not one of those non-drip cups), and I think that made a difference. I don't know if that'll be of any help.

Victor

Originally posted by kelle
How did I know she was getting enough?

When a 3 month old has a wasted look, like a 16 year old after 5 pints of cider, they've had enough.

kelle

lol, victor

muffy moon

Originally posted by Victor
Soem deprivation might go a long way. Orphans and kids in big families tend not to have the fussiness of only children and kids from small families, if they don't eat, they don't get fed. Have you had any success with a bottle, even with your own
milk?

nah your wrong there, my second youngest brother didnt stop looking for the boob till he was two and a half !!!!!

the way my mam turned him off was to put mustard on her boobs........

i will say he is now 22 and has the best teeth i ever seen outside american day time tv;)

Kernel32

kelle, thanks for backing up my assertion. When in I was back in Ireland last year for 6 months with my wife and son we really got to see the difference in attitude. My wife went to two different playgroups, not one mother breast feed. Even family members couldn't comprehend breat feeding, on the flip side I couldn't comprehend washing and sterilzing bottle all the time, it seems like so much more work to bottle feed. Last year I saw an article in the newspaper that highlighted the fact that Ireland has the lowest or one of he lowest breast feeding rates in the EU.

As for the whole Jackson boob storm in a C-cup fiasco, how would the general Irish mother react if a boob popped out while you son of daughter was sitting down and watching The Den on Network 2? What would the irish censors say? In my opinion the incident was mild, the timing and audience was a problem, the reaction has been way too much.

trilo

hi ya,
i told my sister about this thread as she was having the same trouble. i said to her that it was going to be hard and the two of them would be distreesed over it but onece she started it she stuck with it.
she wouldnt accept the bottle one night and my sis pur her to bed , the next morning she was hungry enough to accept the bottle and now my sister is free and happy. and so is amie of course.