Help! Baby refuses to drink milk

Hi Jajacha,

My baby is now 8.5 month and the battle to make him drinking his milk is not yet ceased. I stopped feeding him breastmilk since 6.5 months, since then he feed only formula and some solid. I started feeding him some rice cereal when he was 5.5 months since it was really tiring to feed him only milk.Before solid was introduced, he had only 4 feeding time a day, 7 OZ per meal. I was really collapsing since I am a full-time working mom. It took him 1-1.5 hour to finish his milk and he completely refused to drink milk after 10.30 PM and just prefer to sleep.
Now, he has 5 meals a day: milk after wake up, morning cereal with some purees, mid-day milk, afternoon rice-cereal and purees, and night milk. Feeding him solid is slightly better than feeding him milk. In order to make him drink his milk, we have to show him books and toys during feeding.
I dont know if it is a harmful practice to show toys during feeding time, but we have no choice otherwise he will not take his meal.
Even we have ever tried to just give him when he cried for it, it did not work. Unfortunately, he never seems to be hungry and prefer to play and observe around.
I wonder if you have introduced your baby some solid.
6.5 months is a right time to give him variety of solid food. He may get bored with the milk (just like my baby) and want to eat something else. Try to give him solid for 2 meals so at least you have 2 less stressful feeding time.
I gave him Nestle H.A formula before and I believe it tastes really awful for my son. I have changed his milk into Goat Milk formula and it seems there is an improvement on his feeding time. He seems like it more so he drinks faster. I hope he will not AGAIN get bored and turn to be the same as before.

Dont be disheartened. I know exactly what you feel, since I have gone through that all the time. My life now is pre-occupied with how to feed him ontime and when will I have free time for myself. Furthermore he is a very active baby and just want to do a lot of somersault during feeding time. Only strong adult can handle him.

I hope introducing solid can make your life easier. Good luck!
 
Hi limantari,

Thanks for replying. Actually I've started to feed my son solid food when he's about 5 months old with the thought that he may be fed up with just milk. But I read in books that baby before 1 years old should still rely on milk as his main source for nutrients. That's why I'm still feeding him 5 times a day out of which only 1 meal is solid. Yesterday my son acted so good that he can drink all his milk open-eyed. Just when I thought he's back to normal this morning the same old problem came back. Sigh..... I share your feeling that my life is now pre-occupied with when to feed him and how to feed him so that he can finish his milk. I'm also a working mom and I have a Filipino maid at home to take care of the baby and my mom is also there to supervise. But still I feel so tensed about his bad drinking habbit. I really hope this could end soon. At first I felt saddened and I cried a lot. Now I found myself developing this anger feeling towards my son. How do you cope with this problem emotionally? How do you stay calm over all what is happening?
 
Hi Jajacha,

I completely understand what you feel. I am now also undergoing the emotion roller-coaster every day. I phoned my mom in law few times a day to make sure that he has finished his meal on time. He just will not drink his milk after 9 PM and prefer to sleep. This also the reason that I never be able to return home late and have fun outside after works. My mother in law is just simply too tired to watch him after 9 PM. This is not like working, where we can have day-off on weekend. We can not take dayoff not taking care of him. It's simply 7 days and 24 hours of duty. I did have some anger to my son because he's wasting so much time and make our life so much more inflexible and full of anxiety. However, seeing him growing up, happy and healthy is such a blessing for me that I never imagine life without him. Seeing him smile just makes me melt and forgets all the tiredness of taking care of him. You may also try to look at thing in the more positive side. Once he grows up, eat more solid, I am sure your life will be so much easier. Being a mom is so rewarding.
Remember that you are not alone. I thought I was the only mom with difficult baby before. I consulted all my friends that have kids including my mom, and none of them have experienced this problem.
I wish you good luck and happy parenting!
 
I don't know if this would be much help, but I had the same issue with bubs too - just hates his bottle. I started him on solids when was just over 4 months, but it didn't work, I guess because he just wasn't ready at that time. But now that he is 7 months, he is finding new interest in his solids and for the first time, he willingly opens his mouth for his solids.

He still does a bit of wrestling with his bottle, but it has improved a lot from a few weeks ago. So I guess perhaps it takes time to work out.

I had the same depressed feeling when he wasn't eating well, and all I had was my helper at home ( parents only come once in a while), and I was on the verge of tears as well, but I know that being angry with him would only make things worse - babies are so sensitive . I guess we can only just let them be and as I was told again and again - ALL THIS WILL PASS
 
Hi limantari,

How are you and the little one doing? For the past month I managed to get my son drink milk while watching cartoon on TV. But still each feeding is not smooth, sometimes it takes up to an hour to finish just 7oz of milk. In these 2 days this trick seems not working, he can barely finish half of 7oz and refuses to drink the remaining. My son is going to be 8 months next week. How much milk is your son drinking the whole day? I now feed my son milk 4 times a day (4am, 8am, 3pm, 7pm) plus 1 feeding of porridge for lunch (11am). Altogether he can drink an average of 25oz of milk each day. I am thinking of dropping the 4am feed coz' he seems waking up out of thirst instead of hunger. My maid told me he doesn't really want to drink the milk but rather drinks the water. But if I am to drop this early morning feeding I'm afraid that he's not drinking enough milk for the day. It really troubles me so I'm hoping you can share with me your experience. Really hope to hear from you soon.
 
jajacha,

have you thought of getting your baby to 2 meals of solids a day instead of one? my bub, also like your baby, is going to be 8 months end of this week, and since 3 motnhs old, each milk feeding session is a battle. But now he is doing much better with the solids. He still wrestles with us during milk time, but at least he is feeding regularly at other meals. we also introduced finger foods to him ( finger biscuits with vitamins etc) and he loves it.

he doesn't drink as much milk as he should be, but I guess he will be moving on to more and more solids, and in a few more months time he will drop more of his milk feeds, so what I tell myself is that on the longer run, its more important to make each feeding session a happy experience for him, rather than to try and get as much food in him as possible now.

I don't know if this helps, but I am in your shoes and realised that I just have to let this go, otherwise I would be out of my mind totally !!!
 
Hi Konradsmom,

I am struggling over whether to feed my son one more time of solid during the day. You see if I feed him 2 times solid a day (lunch & dinner) then it only leaves him 2 times to drink milk (morning after wake-up & tea time in the afternoon). And if each milk feed he only drinks 7oz (at best) then it comes to only 14 oz of milk a day. Isn't it too little for a 8-month-old?

But thanks for your suggestion and if you don't mind could you share with me your feeding schedule for your son? Thanks.....
 
bub's schedule is like this:-

6:30 am - milk (6.5z)
9 am (wake up) - milk (as much as he could drink, usually 2-3 oz and we don't force him)
10:15 am - mashed fruit snack
12:30 solid meal ( usually pureed congee+egg yolk+vegetable)
3 pm - milk (6.5 oz)
5:00 pm - fruit snack or biscuit
7:00 pm - dinner solids

lastly, we try and give him some milk before bed time at 8:30 but usually he's not hungry enuf or sleepy enuf to drink it, and so we have to take the less desirable way - feed him at 12am.

This way we try and get hm 3 feeds a day. This scehdule was given to me by a very experienced confinement lady whom I took on for 2 weeks to act as nany for bub as he was sick before , and I find that this works quite well with him.
 
When you feed him at 12am I guess he "sleep drink" the milk right? My boy feels drowsy starting 8:30pm and by the time we make him sleep it'd be 9:00pm or a bit later. Then he can sleep until 4-5am (sometimes he wakes up at 3-4am) and that's when we feed him another milk. And recently he prefers to drink water instead of milk at this early morning feed. Since he's gonna be 8 months soon I'd rather put him on a regular sleep and feed schedule. If I am to feed him 2 times solid food a day, here's the schedule that I work out but really I'm not sure if it can be implemented smoothly:

4-5am: Feed water if he wakes up
8am: Milk
11am: Porridge
3pm: Milk
6pm: Porridge
8-9pm: Milk

I also share your thinking that eventually my son is going to rely on solid food for nutrients whereby milk is as a supplement. But all the books tell you a baby must rely on milk as the main source of nutrient until at least one year of age. Because of this I have hesitation in feeding him more porridge and less milk.
 
My son in the past 2 days refused to drink milk from the bottle even if we played the cartoon to him. He simply won't suck the nipple. I have to pour out the milk into bowl and mix it with baby rice cereal and spoon feed him. I'm not sure if this right to do and I also worry he eats too much "solid". Anyone pls share your experience.
 
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