bottle aversion

My daughter is 10 weeks old and has been on an ng tube due to initial vocal cord paralysis. This is now on the mend and she can swallow and suck and has taken on average half of each feed orally. She is also on medication for reflux which helped increase the volumes. In the last week we had help from nurses who 'challenged' her with the oral feeds and we reduced her volumes to 2/3 of the daily intake to induce hunger but keep her hydrated. She did not feed any more (slept lots) and seems to have develped an aversion to the challenging of the bottle. If she did oral feeds before can I assume she  can do it again, or is the aversion something that needs to be treated differently, i.e do not offer bottle for a while. We have been told that as she grows she will become hungrier and stronger and take more oral feeds but at this rate we are going backwards and it feels like it is taking ages especially as her initial problem has gone away. She should not be experiencing any reflux pain as we put her on the meds a few weeks ago as she was in pain during and after feeds. We want to wean her off the tube as soon as poss.

Any advice welcome

[Renee Radenberg]

Quite often when a child is on tube feeds during the day they are not 'hungry' to eat (the feeding formula fills them up) so they do not eat at meals. Suggest having her be tube feed at night and try baby food during the day. Maybe she will start to eat some foods because she will not feel full from the tube feeds. If she does not eat during the day, a least she is getting what she needs at night with the tube feed. During the day you can try to set up feeding her 3 meals of baby food so she starts to become hungry between meals and hopefully will not resist being feed orally. Hoped that helped you.