It is a matter of great concern when baby refuses to drink milk. There are several reasons why your baby may refuse to drink milk. Read on to know more about the reasons why your baby must be refusing to drink milk. It is also very important for you to contact your pediatrician if you baby is fed only on milk and the baby is refusing to drink milk. 

Finding that the infant does not drink milk is very problematic and challenging situation for parents. If this situation has arisen all of a sudden, there might be some problem or your child is having some discomfort and so he refuses to drink milk. But if the situation is right from the time of birth, it means that he is having a kind of difficult breastfeeding and this is sometimes obvious while sometime mysterious too.

Sometimes the child finds it difficult to latch and start the process of breastfeeding right after the birth. Sometimes the first few times is normal and the child refuses to drink milk during the learning process. This also happens after some days of nursing has passed successfully. Well, there are many reasons behind this and in order to solve the problem you need to find the one that is behind your child’s refusal.

Possible Reasons Why an Infant Does Not Drink Milk

Here are few reasons why your baby must not be drinking milk.

Birth Injury – Birth injury is quite common among premature children or when the child is born through difficult labour. You have to mark whether the child starts crying immediately after he is held or at the time of nursing only.

Breathing Problem – Sometimes infants find breathing difficulty at the time of being fed with milk and they find it difficult to suck and swallow milk hence refuse.

Oral Dislike – There are babies who refuse to take anything in their mouth and this is because they suffer from oral aversion.

Other Preferences – It has been observed that babies prefer some specific way and type of feeding and when that gets changed, they refuse to drink milk. This usually happens when the child is bottle fed and someone else tries to feed the child.

Pain – The child might be suffering from any kind of pain like ear infection or any other discomfort. Infants convey their message of discomfort by crying and refusing to take milk.

Colic – Colic is a catch like situation and majority of the babies suffer from this and the only thing they do is cry a lot. They become very difficult to calm down. These usually occur due to immature digestion, food sensitive or any other reason.

Allergies – If your baby refuses to drink milk and you have found out other issues, see whether he is allergic to milk or not. Sometimes it happens that the child has milk allergy and so he is unable to drink milk.

Sensory Issues – It is possible that too much of light or sound or something with which your child is sensitive stops him from taking milk comfortably.

Illness – Sometimes the child is not feeling well and so he refuses to drink milk. In fact the first sign of illness is that the child either refuses to take milk or his intake gets reduced.

Milk Flow – Sometimes the mother is unaware and the milk flow either is too much or too slow due to which the child refuses to drink milk.