Why would my 9-week-old refuse to nurse from breast?
My 9-week-old has recently started to refuse to nurse from the breast. She will only eat from the bottle (pumped breastmilk).
She has successfully breastfed since birth, she also uses the bottle rarely, just on the occasions when her mother is away.
The breast is not too full for her to latch on. She drinks the milk perfectly fine from a heated bottle.
When we try to put her to the breast, she moves her head away and cries and won't latch on at all. But then, she will accept breastmilk from the bottle with no problem at all.
What can the problem be? And how do we get her to nurse from the breast again when she refuses?
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Have you changed perfumes/soaps/other scented personal products? Soap leaves a residue. My wife accidentally washed her breasts with soap and our son had a similar reaction. She washed with water a few more times and it seemed to resolve the problem. We found that this la leche league book helped immensely in diagnosing those sorts of problems: "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding"
ISBN-10: 0345518446
ISBN-13: 978-0345518446
Some nipples require less effort than nursing from the breast. Milk flows from some just by holding them upside down. In this case, the child only has to stop the flow by covering the opening with the tongue to rest or to swallow. Some children prefer this pattern to the sucking necessary for the breast.
Of course, the strength for later eating and speech is developed during the feeding process. As a speech language pathologist that works with children with feeding and speech problems, I would encourage careful selection of nipples and pacifiers. These devices should be carefully chosen to promote oral motor strength within the child's functional abilities.
The Avent Naturally Feeding Bottle is available in a variety of flow rates. It is an excellent nipple for oral motor development. It often works well for breastfed babies and they have soft spout cups that work well for transitioning to cup drinking later. I'm not sure what flow rate nipple you are presently using, but you might try going to a slower flow rate if possible to make your baby work harder since the hypothesis is that bottle feeding is easier than the breast.
You might research different nipples and find one that more closely matches the breast. You might try the Evenflo Classic Sensitive Response (silicone). This nipple works the cheeks and lips and is not for a baby with weak musculature. It does flow during pauses in sucking however.
I encourage parents to compare nipples and pacifiers by trying them. With careful experimentation, you can identify the subtle differences in effort, pattern, etc.
Of course, she may rebel against another nipple at first, but it may be worth the aggravation of changing.
Maybe switch bottles to something that is closer to breastfeeding, not the shape but the action? I read something about that on a site discussing Nuk bottles/nipples.
I think, it is much easier to drink from a normal baby bottle as to suck from the breast, so refusing the breast and preferring a bottle could just be more "convenient" for the baby.
I see that our situation was different, as our baby did not know at the beginning how to effectively drink at the breast (nipple confusion) while yours already knew it and someday seemed to refuse to do it.
We were recommended by a speech therapist (which also helped the baby learning to use its muscles for sucking by kind of a massage in the mouth and on the face) to use the playtex bottles (http://www.playtexbaby.com/Bottles/Dropins) which have a single use plastic bag containing the milk and are supposed to be as "difficult" to suck at as the human breast.
I'm not sure if they are also suited for your case or only for learning to suck at a breast, but at least they could be an alternative to the "standard" bottles which are mostly used and which make sucking much easier for the baby compared to breastfeeding.
For our experience with nipple confusion (most probably caused by very early bottle feeding during the first days) see my answer here:
Can pacifier-use interfere with breastfeeding?
Many Hospitals in the US have Lactation consultants and this is all they do. We had issues with our second child that was stressing both the baby and the mommy out. The consultant came in and worked wonders for us.
Also check out La Leche League, an organization of lactation consultants: www.llli.org/resources.html
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