Breast Refusal - HELP!

[Jamily]

My DD is 11 weeks old and has been BF happily since birth, but today she has totally rejected my breast. She is taking expressed milk via the bottle fine (the milk was expressed this morning) but screams when the breast is offered. HELP!!? Does anyone know anything about this? The only change is that today she had a dummy whereas before she has rejected them. Could that be something to do with it, or just coincidence?

Thanks :confused:

[lil monkey]

The exact problem happened to me when Tayla was around that age.

if you do a search for 'breast rejection' you will get the thread with replies and will find that you are not alone with this problem.

[mum2rhys]

Hi Clairet - at 10 weeks my little boy absolutely flat refused the breast, looked at me with utter disgust and screamed every time I offered the breast to him. It was awful, as I am sure you can understand, I could not think about anything else because apart from being worried about DS I was worried about painful breasts, milk drying up, never being able to breast feed again and lots of other silly things. I rang Australian Breast Feeding Association who were great and explained that there are lots of possible reasons for breast refusal - hormonal, change in deoderant, teething and many others. Also on the Child and Youth Health website there is a good section on it www.cyh.com . I was reluctant to give DS bottle as I wanted to continue breastfeeding so we just went with the flow and after about four days everything just settled back down and we are cruising along again. ABA were very helpful though and have been on every occasion I've spoken to them.

Best of Luck.

[JanetF]

I really recommend you ring the ABA too. It's very normal for this to happen occasionally so a bit of help and info will make a huge difference to you. Happy feeding ;)

ABA – Australian Breastfeeding Assoc.
http://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/default.htm

ABA – helpline
Telephone Counselling
All capital cities and some other areas run a Breastfeeding Helpline on a roster system. You can also look under Australian Breastfeeding Association in your local White Pages (Some books may still have us listed as Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia). The Helplines are available 7 days a week. Counsellors are answering calls in their own homes so please take this into consideration when calling.

BREASTFEEDING HELPLINES
ACT/Southern New South Wales (02) 6258 8928
New South Wales (02) 8853 4999
Queensland (07) 3844 8977 or (07) 3844 8166
Townsville (07) 47235566
South Australia and NT (08) 8411 0050
Northern Territory counsellor contact line (08) 8411 0301
Tasmania (03) 6223 2609
Tasmania - North (03) 6331 2799
Victoria (03) 9885 0653
Western Australia (08) 9340 1200