BM to hypo/elemental at 8 mos?

[Anonymous]

Hi mamas,

Our daughter is 8 mos exactly and has been
exclusively breastfed until now. She took BM from bottles at first, but
around 2 mos we gave her a bottle with Alimentum and she refuses to
touch a bottle ever since! I kid you not–one bottle is all it took.

We have been slowly working on getting her used to a sippy, and while
she knows how to drink from it, she will only take sips (of BM) here and
there but never drinks consistently. She has done well eating cereal
and a couple of other solids so far, and we are proceeding very slowly.
She is MSPI and I am on a limited diet.

For various reasons with
which I won’t bore you, we would like to begin switching her to a
formula, however slowly. Since she is already 8 mos, and does not drink
well from a bottle/sippy to begin with, we anticipate a major battle,
and we are very anxious about creating oral aversions, since we’ve dealt
with them with our son. So…we are wondering how to proceed.

I
am prepared to BF a few more months, as long as she is getting used to
something else and we can switch when she is about a year old. Should we
try a flavored Neocate Junior, Elecare Vanilla, or Splash? Am I right
to assume that Alimentum, Nutramigen, or plain Neocate/Elecare are
likely to be a disaster with a baby who has been exclusively BFed (and
who stopped taking bottles after one bottle of Alimentum!)?

Any
advice from those of you who have made a similar transition would be
greatly appreciated!

Thank you,

Ellie

[hellbennt]

have you tried a straw cup?
this worked well for my babies, also the soft spout sippy by Nuby which is practically a bottle

I breastfed my little ones until 15 months, but was ‘down’ to just two breastfeeding sessions by at 12 months. mine would not drink any kind of milk in a sippy! I think this is quite ‘normal.’
have you tried any other ‘milks’?
some that poeple on this board have used:
hemp milk
rice milk
oat milk
potato milk

[Anonymous]

I don’t know the extent of how sensitive her MSPI is but I will try to help…

I wouldn’t assume that Alimentum/Nutramigen would be disastrous as far as her tolerating it. I would certainly try that before the Neocate/Elecare (for cost reasons but also for taste reasons).

One thing I might consider is what I did. I ebf until 10-11 mths old then introduced rice milk. He still bf until 13mths old but was ALSO getting rice milk. Eventually we had to move onto some added calories but his ped GI & dietician prefer the added calories into something he likes (Rice milk in this case) vs. a battle w/ something he doesn’t like/won’t drink/tastes bad.

With whatever you decide to move on to I would maybe try the hard spout Gerber sippies. This is what my bottle refusing bf babies have liked re: weaning to something new. They weren’t ready for straw cups yet & the soft spout sippies were too similar to bottles that they still refused them.

I hope this helps some-

[Anonymous]

Hi there! I think it may be hard to get an exclusively BF infant/toddler to take (a) a bottle and (b) formula.

Like a previous poster mentioned, I’m not sure the extent of your LO intolerance/allergies, but you could always start with a hydrolaste formula like the Alimentum, where the proteins are only partially broken down. However, if your LO cannot tolerate that and it doesn’t work you may need a hypoallergenic formula, like Neocate. There are flavor packets/straws you can use with Neocate which may help your LO transition, especially since the unflavored formulas are going to taste a lot different (obviously) than BM. You could also transition your LO by weaing slowly onto the formula, mixing it with breastmilk.

Hope that helps. Let us know what you decide!

[Author]

Posts