I'm sorry in advance for the length. I've been drafting this in my head at 3am for a week and I think if I don't put the whole thing down somewhere I'm going to lose it in the parking lot at work.
LO was born January 29, so six weeks tomorrow. 7 lb 2 oz at birth, dropped to 6 lb 9, back to birth weight at day 11, and at her one month she was 10 lb 4 oz. 45th percentile and tracking her own curve. EBF since about day four. The first two weeks were bad, my right side cracked and bled and I white-knuckled through it, but the latch is fine now and has been for a month. We're at 8 or 9 wet diapers and 3 to 4 dirty. So, up front: intake is not the problem. I know that's the first thing people ask and I don't want anyone to waste a reply on it.
The problem is that I go back to work on April 27. Pediatric dental office here in Denver, 8:30 to 5, and I'm a hygienist so my day is columns of appointments. There is no "I'll just run home." Daycare starts April 20 for a transition week and it's $1,340 a month and we have already paid the deposit.
I started offering a bottle at five weeks because everything I read said four to six weeks is the window. First attempt she took maybe a quarter of an ounce, made a face like I'd handed her a lemon, and then arched her whole back and screamed until she was purple and sweating. Eight days later we are worse, not better. Now she cries when she sees it. Not when it's in her mouth. When she SEES it!
What I've tried, because I have absolutely over-researched this: Dr. Brown's Level 1, Comotomo, Lansinoh mOmma, milk warmed to 99 degrees with an actual thermometer because I am unwell, milk straight from the fridge in case she wanted it cold, offering drowsy, offering when she was starving (catastrophic, do not do this!), offering after a full nursing session, a dream feed around 10pm, my husband trying while I hid in our bedroom, my mom trying while I hid in our bedroom.
What's actually getting me is that she looks at me while she's screaming like I am doing something to her. Like I've betrayed her. And then twenty minutes later she nurses like nothing happened and falls asleep on me and I sit there feeling like a monster. Over a bottle.
I have 9 oz in the fridge and about 90 in the freezer and none of it is worth anything if she won't drink it. i keep finding threads where people say some babies just hold out and reverse cycle and nurse all night once you're back... and I do not know how to be a person who cleans teeth for eight hours after a night like that.
So. Have I made this worse by pushing eight days in a row? Should I stop entirely for a week? Did anyone's baby actually turn the corner on this, and how long did it take? I will take literally anything at this point! Thank you for reading all of that, sorry again!
Mine refused for five weeks. Five. I tried nine bottles. There is a box in my garage that is just nipples, like a museum of my failure.
She took one on day three of daycare, from a 22-year-old named Kayla who had been doing this for eleven months and had absolutely no emotional stake in the outcome. Three ounces, no drama, Kayla mentioned it at pickup the way you'd mention the weather. I sat in the parking lot and cried, and I could not have told you at the time whether it was relief or being insulted.
My read after all of...
IBCLC here. I can't tell you why your daughter is refusing, and anyone who tells you from eight paragraphs is guessing at your baby. But I can give you numbers, and the numbers may be the thing that lets you sleep.
Things I'd want to know: how many attempts a day, and how long does each one run before you stop? Is she taking a pacifier without a fight? Has anyone actually looked inside her mouth and assessed oral function since the hospital, or has it only ever been "the latch looks good"? And what's the flow rate on the nipple...
Okay, answering these in order because I want to be useful and not just sad in your replies.
Four or five attempts a day, and I'm embarrassed to write this down, but some of them run 40 minutes because I keep thinking she's about to give in. I'm always in the house. I have never once actually left. Level 1 nipples, and reading Brooke's comment I think she's gulping and then panicking. She does the wide-eyed thing and then it falls apart, she isn't pushing it out with her tongue.
And she takes a Soothie pacifier with zero problem! Has since week...
Don't throw up. You were doing the thing every single one of us gets told to do. Try harder. You're now the eighth-day version of a person who has information. That is a different thing from being a person who did something wrong.
The pacifier detail is useful and it moves my thinking, though it is still not a diagnosis and I won't pretend otherwise. A baby who holds a Soothie for twenty minutes can organize a suck on silicone. That doesn't rule anything out. Pacifiers don't require milk transfer and plenty of babies with restrictions do fine on them. But...
Dr. Brown's Level 1 jumped out at me. Is she gagging and pushing it out with her tongue, or is she gulping, going wide-eyed, and then losing it? Those look identical from two feet away and they are opposite problems!
Mine was the second one. Level 1 flowed way too fast for her, milk was going in whether she asked for it or not, and she decided the bottle was a thing that attacked her. We dropped to preemie flow. Which felt insane, she was almost 9 lbs and "preemie" is right there on the package! It changed everything in about...
Before anything else: where are you when your husband offers it? You said you hid in the bedroom. Same house?
Because that was my entire problem and it took me three weeks to believe it. My LO is 11 months now, but at seven weeks she refused every bottle my husband offered while I was upstairs with the door shut. I was convinced it was the nipple, the temperature, the brand, some flaw in me. It was none of those. She could smell me. Babies refuse the nursing parent specifically, and apparently they extend that to the nursing parent being anywhere...