Purely anecdotal from personal experience only, and PLEASE REMEMBER that I
am NOT AN LC OR LLLL or any other such professional, just a mom who reads
everything she can get her hands on and has done so for the past four years...

My son had poor weight gain problems (even to the degree of losing some
weight) "all of a sudden" at about 4 months of age. Up to that point he'd
only received one bottle in his life, at about 6 weeks of age, and was 100%
breastfed.  I was told to supplement and started using the SNS filled with
ABM, and things were _very_ slowly picking back up in the weight gain dept.,
but not enough to satisfy the peds at the military hospital.  They insisted
that(dare I say they forced me?) I give him bottles along with using the SNS
for ABM supplementation.
 I felt instintcively that if he had bottles at this point, when we were
having so many other difficulties and I really didn't know why he'd started
losing weight anyway, that it would be the end of breastfeeding for us. I
expressed this concern to them, and they said "Nonsense; four & a-half month
old babies don't develop nipple confusion!!"  I believe I was correct.
Twenty-four hours of bottles only and he never went back to the breast. It
was over like that. Is this nipple confusion?  That's what it appeared to be
to me.  At any rate it was breast refusal after introducing bottles at a
critical time (we were a very stressed nursing couple as it was), even
though he was almost five months old.

Just my $.02

Sheri, who still doesn't know what the heck happened back then with
breastfeeding, and would really like to know! I know one is not supposed to
ask for personal help here, and I'm not a "lactation professional", just a
wannabee, but if anyone would like to go over all the details and come up
with a hypothesis or two, please email me!

Sheri L. Durham
email: [log in to unmask]