Rebel

According to the pediatrician, Sara Kate is in a 'rebellious stage.' So what's the story with that? Let me back up a couple of weeks...she started getting about 4 oz. of formula for her afternoon bottle at school. :-( I agonized over the fact that I had to start giving her formula, but all along my breast feeding goal was 9 months. And she made it 10 months and a week of exclusive breast feeding. Believe me, I'm thrilled with that and am so proud of her and myself, but it was still hard for me to give into the formula. I am not pumping at work anymore but a couple days a week I am able to pump when I get home so I'm still able to get enough for her to have the morning bottle every day be my milk. So currently, she nurses in the morning, gets a bottle of breast milk mid morning, her afternoon bottle is formula, and she nurses at bedtime. And on the weekends, she nurses morning, noon-ish, and night so we don't use any formula on the weekends right now. Anyway...back to this past week. Tuesday, Chris picked Sara Kate up from school and called me and said that she had no milk during the day. What?!? This concerned me quite a bit so I called her school and talked to them. She didn't want it and kept pushing it away was their response. Wednesday comes and goes, and her report card has a note on it (and Chris talked to her teachers), and she just was completely pushing away her bottle of breast milk and her bottle of formula. She was rejecting drinking water out of her sippy cup, too. They eventually mixed her milk with cereal in the afternoon and spoon fed it to her that way. On Thursday, I sent one of the sippy cups we use at home (they are different than the one she uses at school), and I put a note in her lunchbox that said something about if she rejects the bottle, try give it to her in her sippy cup (she won't take a bottle at home anymore so if we have to give her anything, she gets it out of her sippy cup and it's not a problem). When Chris picked her up Thursday afternoon, she was still rejecting the bottle and sippy cup, and they had to mix her milk with cereal again. I was starting to get concerned (and her teacher mentioned something about maybe she has an ear infection since sucking can hurt when their ears are infected) so I called the pediatrician, explained the situation, and that's when the nurse said she's just being a rebel. Ha! She said that since Sara Kate is still nursing fine at home and drinking water out of a cup fine at home, she doesn't think there is anything wrong with her ears, and that she's just going through a 'rebellious stage.' Lovely. My 10 month old, the rebel. She said that babies eat when they want, and they don't want to when they don't want to. She said have her teachers keep offering her the bottle and eventually she would take it. I put a long note in her lunchbox for Friday explaining everything, and I was anxious to see what Friday brought. They did something different and gave her the breast milk bottle right after breakfast before nap time and she took it! But she wouldn't take the afternoon formula bottle so they mixed it with cereal and fed it to her. Is that not the weirdest thing ever?? I'm definitely wondering what this week will bring...maybe she'll get back on track. Or maybe she'll continue to be rebellious.

Doesn't this look like the face of a rebel?!? :-)