How do you get them to drink anything but formula...

My poor babies are sick. They've both had a virus with diarhia for a few days now. DD is getting better, but DS is not. He's vomited once and his tummy's really upset. Both of them have no appetite for formula or food.

I need to get them to drink white grape juice and pedialyte to stay hydrated, but my DS won't have any of it. He's closing his little mouth tight and twisting his head back and forth to avoid the bottle and I can't get a drop in.

Any advice on how to get him to drink anything other than formula?

 

My poor babies are sick. They've both had a virus with diarhia for a few days now. DD is getting better, but DS is not. He's vomited once and his tummy's really upset. Both of them have no appetite for formula or food.

I need to get them to drink white grape juice and pedialyte to stay hydrated, but my DS won't have any of it. He's closing his little mouth tight and twisting his head back and forth to avoid the bottle and I can't get a drop in.

Any advice on how to get him to drink anything other than formula?

 

Try diluting the formula with pedialyte, maybe try 3/4 pedialyte and 1/4 formula. when mixing the pedalyte, try the unflavored one that way they don't get used to their bottles having flavor.

 

When mine were sick I used some pedialyte when mixing their formula bottles. So that when it was time to eat, they were getting their "food" and pedialyte. Their bottles were larger than normal, but a little diluted. They did not eat as much solid food when they were sick, but keeping them hydrated is the most important thing. I felt so bad the first day they were sick and I kept trying to get them to eat their bananas (thinking they needed their energy) and my one DD threw up everything - formula and bananas. So after that I just focused on keeping them hydrated and if they wanted to eat solids, fine. If not, fine. They eventually worked their appetites back up.

 

This is going in a totally different direction but the way we were able to get our girls into drinking water was to give it to them from our water bottles. We noticed them staring at us when we would drink a bottle of water and they would reach out to grab it. So we started giving them little sips from it and they LOVED it. They loved drinking from something so different. It WAS a bit messy at first and would dribble down their chin and sometimes they would start choking a little bit from getting too much water but even after coughing from it they would still grab the bottle for more. After that we tried giving them sips of water from plastic cups and then eventually I tried the sippy cups and now they love water and I give it to them through out the day and during meals. This may not help now but maybe could help in the future? Hope you figure it out.

 

Thanks for the advice! I'll try that. Especially using Pedialyte for their formula.

 

Another thing to try is giving it to them with a straw. Some babies find that very interesting, especially if they think the drink belongs to you. My girls always loved the big medicine droppers so I'd give them the Pedialyte one teaspoon at a time and let them suck it out.

 

My old doc told me to give them any liquid other than formula in a sippy cup (or as other have said a "foreign" driking device!!) they will find it much more interesting and probably drink a little more! PS he said to do this all the time not just when they were sick... it will help when breaking from the bottle later on.