how can i get this baby to eat!?!?!?!?

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andersongrl03

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hi!! i have a five month old daughter that eats great! but i am babysitting a four month old boy and he WONT eat. his mom breast feeds him, and thats all he wants is a boob. when ever i try to feed him he screams! i have tried everything... his mom refuses to quit breast feeding... she pumps enough for the day (i watch him five days a week) but he doesnt want to eat cause its from a bottle.. he eats maybe three to four oz from 8 to 4! thats not enough.. please help me i am losing my mind. he cries all day long and my daughter and i are going insane.. i can spend as much time with her because i am occupied with the screaming boy.... PLEASE HELP!!!
yes i have tried the cup and stuff too... he wont calm down enough to eat... and yes i have told the mom that she needs to quit, but her excuse is that it hurts to pump all the time... is this true?? ( i didnt breast feed my daughter so i dont know) and she is afraid to loose her bond with him.. which i think is a load of crap
oh and yeah i have held him in my arms, on my lap, just lying on the floor, in his car seat... everything!!!
 
Oh gosh. That is definitely not enough. Maybe ask the mom to start giving him a bottle of breast milk while she is taking care of him to help with the transition. If that doesn't work you might just need to tell her it is not working out. That would be hard but it sounds like you are at the end of your rope and it is hard to be good to a baby under that stress, yours and hers. The mom needs to see this as a serious problem because of malnutrition issues and safety reasons. Whatever you end up doing, make sure you and his mom get on the same page about it.
 
Yes another feeding method might work, but ultimately you have to put this on the baby's family to help you out a little bit if you're with the baby every day. I started bottles with our son 2 months before I knew we had to start daycare. So once he went he was good with taking bottles of breast milk. It doens't seem like his mom did this, and has now left you with the mess. If this was our daycare provider, she'd be telling us we would have to find a solution to not eating from a bottle or cup, otherwise we couldn't go there anymore. Most day care centers are like that - a friend of ours had to take 2 weeks off work to get her baby to take milk from a bottle or cup since he would not eat anything at all at day care (and he was 3 months old). Those 2 weeks were dedicated to getting him to eat from a bottle. It's too much for you to deal with your own baby and another one that's refusing to eat and screaming all day because of it. Does the mom know how little he is eating? If I were her I would be concerned about how little he's getting and try to work on a solution so that he's eating more during the day. Hopefully she can work with you on it, since it seems to me that if this is the way the baby is going to be and no other feeding mechanisms work, he's not going to be able to keep coming to you (or anyone for that matter!).
 
Try a different feeding method. A sippy cup, an open cup, a spoon, etc. Many nursing babies refuse bottles, that really isn't a problem you just have to find another method of getting him his milk.
 
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