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I have always given our baby a bottle of expressed breast milk in the mornings.

Recently my partner has decided that she is pretty fed up of expressing (I don't blame her!) and since we are now weaning our baby we figured it would be ok to start giving her some formula.

She was quite happy with the formula for a couple of weeks and then suddenly decided she didn't like it. Now every time I try to give her a bottle she just struggles and refuses to drink the milk.

Is there anything I can do to encourage her to take the bottle again?

I am quite a snob and insist that she has only organic produce, which does limit us to a single brand, so changing the brand is not an option...

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  • How old is the child? – Hairy Sep 8 '11 at 13:01
  • @Hairy, she was born premature so is either 9 months or nearly 6 depending on how you look at it. – Mongus Pong Sep 8 '11 at 13:36
  • No worries. we had issues with the child being confused when we did the same, at about the same age. I cnanot remember how it was solved, so will consult with the mnanagement and come back. It did get solved. I actually think, iirc, that we changed the style of teat – Hairy Sep 8 '11 at 13:49
  • @Hairy, the problem wont be with the teat as she is very used to taking a bottle, it is the change in drink that she is objecting to. – Mongus Pong Sep 8 '11 at 14:20
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My wife mixed breast milk in with the formula for awhile, eventually increasing the formula until it was all the baby was used to. At some points she had issues and also had a small bottle of all breast milk, so when the baby refused the formula she would start one bottle then switch. Our kids mostly refused formula, and my oldest wouldn't take the bottle much, but it worked out when we did it. Sometimes you have to trick the kids until they get used to doing things your way. :smirk:

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    Ok sounds like a plan. I will don my riot gear and suggest to my partner that she should express a bit more! – Mongus Pong Sep 9 '11 at 8:43
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Interesting that she was happy with it for about 2 weeks. Are you sure or have you checked if it has caused any irritation to the stomach? If everything is OK, what if you try to slowly introduce the formula with expressed milk, for example half expressed milk and half formula and decrease the expressed milk while increasing the formula until she (especially her stomach) gets really used to it. I had to do this similar thing when we had to give our baby an alternative formula to the one he was used to drinking.

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You could consider changing your routine a bit.

If your baby is 6 months old, it's a good time to start introducing solids (if you haven't already). Instead of giving her a bottle in the morning, you could give her rice cereal with formula mixed in.

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Actually, it looks like there are multiple options for organic formula. You just might not see them in the stores you normally shop in. http://www.earthsbest.com/node/12 http://similac.com/baby-formula/similac-advance-organic http://www.vermontorganicsformula.com/ http://www.naturesone.com/

I personally wouldn't wean a baby who was born so early though. Preemies already have a lot of health issues, no need to give them formula which is harder to digest and isn't as good for them.

If your heart is really set on weaning though, you probably just need to give it time. You could try gently rocking her as you give her the bottle and singing to her.

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    Thanks. I will have to find sources for those in the UK. We are weaning under advice from both our consultant and health visitor. Preemies tend to need weaning earlier than term babies. She needs as many calories as we can (safely) load into her to get her weight up. Breast milk is no longer sufficient (she still gets plenty, we are just adding a load more on top). – Mongus Pong Sep 8 '11 at 16:27

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