The Big, Bad Bottle

 This kid is putting everything in his mouth: fingers, toys, blankets, pacifier...pretty much anything he can get his little hands on. But, when it comes to a full bottle, uh-uh, no way, forget it. We've had crying, screaming tantrums for the past few days over the bottle. Our current goal is to just get through a bottle introduction without setting off all of the major stress cues. Nevermind actually DRINKING from said bottle. It's like some little switch flipped all the way on sometime around Thursday, and the only time we can get him to take the bottle now is when he's half asleep at 10:30pm. I even tried letting him play with the empty bottle before his breakfast this morning. That was fun, he flipped it around, held on to it, tried to put it in his mouth, but the minute there was actual milk in there, it became something to fuss about. My current theory is that since he doesn't have "control" over this during the feed, it has become a major stress event. Everything else he puts in his mouth he can grab and remove or play with at will. During bottle time, we hold the bottle in place and we hold him in place, too. It may be all about independence. I don't know. His SLP is coming Tuesday, so we can get feeding help then. And he's working hard on sitting up, since that's a prerequisite for spoon feeding. I really hope that spoon feeding will be the magic key that unlocks the door to life without a g-tube. Because, bottle feeding isn't going to get us there.