Your Baby's Bottle-feeding Aversion: Reasons And Solutions

You need this book if your baby has a bottle aversion. My baby was exclusively bottle fed and started refusing feeds- only eating when asleep or drowsy. Her weight percentile was dropping. I am actually a pediatrician. I was at a loss what to do. My baby saw ENT, lactation and speech. No one knew what to do. Everyone wants to blame physical causes when it truly is behavioral. I wanted a feeding tube for my baby because I was so worried about her eating. I cried almost everyday. When I started the plan that this book lays out, it was extremely hard but in a matter of days my baby was accepting feeds again while awake and on day 4, she was demanding feeds and taking 4oz! I am truly amazed. Our lives are changed and I will definitely be recommending this book to my patients who are going through a bottle aversion!

Turns out the NICU and GI team were massively overestimating my daughters formula needs. At 4 months adjusted age she went from screaming at her bottle to eating happily in just two days of the methods in this book. Now she's over one and she's thriving without her tube. Don't wait, the sooner the better.

I was at desperate level to know what to do. My daughter was breastfeeding perfectly until 9 weeks and then suddenly she cried and cried everytime. Within 10 days I discovered the problem (aversion because of pressure to nurse) and this book. When I started her solutions things changed within hours!!! wow

This book not only saved us from putting our baby in a feeding tube, it also saved our sanity.We have resorted to sleep feeding our baby 24/7 to the point that he wasn’t getting enough sleep because we would get him to nap and he would wake up after eating. We pretty much can’t do anything because we do this cycle every 3 hours. We were at the point where my husband feeds our baby while I help open his mouth because his tongue is on the way. This is just to get the bottle in while he is asleep. It was a very stressful time.We were reluctant to try this book initially because we’ve worked so hard to maintain his weight gain and his percentiles were already dropping at this point so knowing he is expected to lose the weight was a hard decision to make because what if it doesn’t work, he loses weight, and it ends up not working? We just accepted the fact that if that happens, he will still be in a feeding tube, which is what we are trying to avoid. So we were leaning on the fact that if it works, at least we tried a different possibility.On the first day, one of the toughest, he ate while awake after not eating for 8 hours. On the 4th day, he lost half a pound, which is the highest drop he had. He started napping longer and started taking more volume. There were times when we were tempted to revert back but we read the book together on the first day and kept each other in check. I would even search for specific sections on what to expect to make sure we are on track.The first day also helped us identify that the preemie formula he was taking is what was causing his chronic reflux and vomiting, something that his lab panel didn’t detect.Overall, he is doing really well now. He has also been taking more solids and although it took about a full month to see more promising results, we were very fortunate to stumble upon this book and all the detailed reviews. I’ve been sharing it with a lot of people, especially the feeding specialists and healthcare pros that help our baby.We can’t thank the author enough for writing this book. It changed our quality of life for the better and we can finally enjoy our baby.

My 3 month developed her bottle aversion at 2 months. Maybe from a case of reflux, I’m not sure. But after meds nothing was working. She would deny her bottle regardless.The first few days were scary knowing she only got about 10oz. But by day 4 she was eating 3oz almost consistently.Fast forward to today (2 weeks later) she’s eating 4oz almost every feeding. 3.5 if not 4.Be strict. Follow the rules. I no longer have stress feeding my baby. And neither does she. It’s wonderful.I’ve learned that some babies will regulate their own digestive system. I felt a lot of stress because my pediatrician said I needed to feed her more so when I tried it only made her aversion worse. She’s now eating enough almost daily and it’s so wonderful!!

My baby was born premature at 32 weeks. We were terrified as parents and wanted our baby to grow so we "overfed" her, causing bottle aversion. The bottle aversion started at 4 months. She would scream and cry at the sight of the bottle and pretty soon we could only feed her at nap times, while she was drowsy or fully asleep. We didn't know if she had GERD or tongue tie or what was wrong with her. Even at 11 months, we had so many screaming nights that would last over an hour trying to get her to feed with no luck, with frustration, martial arguments, and grandparents intervention. We needed help. The thing is, my baby is perfectly happy and laughing during non-bottle drinking times, so I knew she was a healthy baby.I found this book at 6 months and wanted to desperately try it, but it was too hard watching her not eat. Finally, after too many arguments and a crying, unhappy baby, I had had enough. We even went to occupational therapy to fix her problem, but instead of getting her to drink from bottle, we focused on drinking from a straw.After following the book, it only took 1-2 days before we got results. After the first day, she only took a few sips while fully awake, which was amazing still because she would never do that before. By day 2, in the evening, she drank 20-30ml by herself. By day 3, she drank a whole 150ml bottle BY HERSELF!!!!! Then in the morning of Day 4, she also drank a full bottle 150ml by herself for breakfast and also 150ml at nap time. This book works!!!!! Trust me, please try it if your baby has bottle aversion. Offer her the bottle, but do not force/pressure them! Also, keep other foods to a minimum to motivate the child to drink from bottle.

This book has literally saved the feeding/eating relationship for my baby and me.Dr.s and health visitors said my baby looked healthy and continued to prescribe more anti reflux medications/ hypoallergenic formula but while his tummy got a better his feeding times were awful. My anxiety was going nuts as I worried about him eating less and less and no one but me seemed concerned that my 3 month old baby was feeding so little and was screaming, arching and crying every time I tried to feed him.I read this book late at night in one long read (desperation). And before I knew it I had embarked on our journey to overcome a feeding aversion.It wasn’t easy. There were times when I cried. But I’d already been crying because having a baby who won’t feed is very very stressful. But… after reading this book I understood the principles of the aversion and respected Rowena Bennett’s rules and theories. They made sense to me.On day 3 of following the routine and rules the author so clearly sets out my little boy has had over 900ml of milk without a tear or an arch or a scream.If you’re reading this and wonder if your baby has an aversion to eating i encourage you to buy this book. I can’t say it’s easy but the rewards of following the authors rules, are joyful.We now begin the next stage of this feeding journey but I feel well armed with this book and advice from the online community that supports this book to keep going.If you buy the book:- Read it quickly, but read it properly.-Don’t skip to the chapter where you’re told the rules. You need to read all the chapters to fully understand why, then you’ll have sound reason to understand and put into practice the rules.Good luck.Update: my son and I overcame bottle aversion and went on to have a long and really wonderful feeding relationship.I thank the author of this book, Rowena Bennett, from the bottom of my heart and secondly I thank the internet for the thread that led me to this book. My endless hours of googling to try and find an answer to why my baby wouldn’t eat and screamed, arched his back and pulled away was not fruitless on this occasion.

Before buying this book, I told my partner that if this works, I would be writing a review but words don't even do this book justice on how much it has helped us.Honestly, this book has saved our sanity. Our 5 month old son developed a bottle aversion at 2 months old after strict feeding instructions in regards to when he was born over a month prematurely. Due to his low weight, we were instructed that he had to have specific amounts to catch up, however, we were not informed when we could stop this - sadly this led to his bottle aversion. We absolutely dreaded feed times, he would scream in feeding position, refuse feeds entirely, scream at the sight of a bottle etc, however, between feeds, he was his bubbly happy little self.After endless doctors appointments and visits to a&e, we still had no help or any reason as to why this was happening. We stumbled across bottle aversions online and saw other peoples' stories and it resonated so much with us. This book was recommended on a thread and we bought it straight away after seeing the reviews.Our baby was just over 3 months old when we started the course, it was so difficult in the beginning, and there were ups and downs throughout and plenty of tears from myself and my partner, we stuck to it after hearing success stories, however, we did tweak it a bit to match our baby's needs, which became apparent through the course.After two weeks, his bottle aversion was pretty much gone, two weeks seems forever when you are going through it, but it is worth it for the time afterwards. Our baby boy is now nearly 6 months old and he happily takes his milk and lets us know with his actions when he is finished and he has been like this since we completed the course. We have had days where he doesn't drink well and we just have to tell ourselves that he will make up for it as he knows his own body.Another thing that made a huge difference was switching to DR Brown's narrow neck bottles. We were using the wider neck ones, however, the narrow neck bottles were super easy for our baby to latch onto and he actually wanted to keep the bottle in his mouth while feeding, the amounts he was having drastically increased when we made this switch too.It is important to read the entire book to make sure that the course is being done right, I speed read it in an entire evening and then folded pages to refer back to when needed.

As all the previous reviews put it eloquently, this book is a life saver.Looking back, I had been consistently overfed my daughter, believing the “recommended amount” is what I must get down on her every day. She was born big due to my gestational diabetes and remained big as I evidently overfed her (it is entirely possible to overfed a baby before 2 months as they just drink from sucking reflexes and vomit sometimes). As she got bigger and bigger, the pressure to get her to drink more is stressing me out everyday. And I force fed her.Reading the book made me realise some babies “catch down” to revert to their generic endowment, which makes complete sense. It would be entirely normal for my daughter to drink less oz per body lb as she grows over 3 months as she was born unusually big but me and my parter are both slim.It is genuinely eye opening and if you search online, vast vast majority of “baby refusing to eat” is attributed to incorrect teat, medical problems.I also feel it is shambles for health professionals to advise the same oz per body lb for all babies, overlooking their individual situation and without explaining the caveat around that number, leaving new mums desperately trying to stuff x amount of milk down their babies throat because it is advised to be the correct amount to do.Overall, I think every bottle feed mums should read it and perhaps ALL health professionals should be trained to understand baby behavioural issues too.I followed the advice of this book...day 1 and 2 are real tough. We had 8-12 hours episodes of refusing to drink. But day 3 we start to see improvements and I’m confident as long as we follow the instruction, it will continue to improve.Thank you Rowena!

I have a 7 month baby girl who from 6 weeks stopped drinking milk awake. I could only feed her when she napped and it would take hours. it has been such a battle and so so hard going out and feeding in public is almost impossible. The doctors couldn't give me a answer to why! I came across this book online, I'm on the morning of day 3 and my baby drinks milk awake !! day 1 is the hardest but u cant give up!!! it works!! I'm so so happy she drinks a bottle in 5-10mins and because shes hungry and wants to. she still has progress to make but I'm so proud of her, every feed she improves!! if your baby doesnt drink milk and u think they dont like it or theres something wrong... they probably just have a feeding aversion. buy this book!!!! I want to kiss rowena Bennett for changing my life and making my baby happy!!

I honestly cannot recommend this book enough! I suspect my daughter has had a bottle aversion so roughly 2.5-3 months, she is now 6.5 months, and it got to the point where she would cry as soon as I put her in a feeding position or if she saw the bottle. Once starting this program I saw improvements within 3 days, although I should point out that the first 2 days were really hard! Fast forward 6 weeks and my daughter is a different baby, she absolutely loves her feeds now and takes great volumnes, she's also being weaning onto solids and is enjoying that too... I'm one very happy mama, so if you're also in this position don't hesitate, buy this book it will help! Also, check out the facebook page for support :)