My baby was taking both breast and bottle, but I slackened with the bottle and didn’t give her one for three weeks — and now she’s turning her nose up at it. What do I do?

With my first baby, I contacted our local Plunket Family Centre in a panic. They gave some very solid advice: I needed to realise that my baby was perfectly capable of drinking from a bottle — but was just choosing not to. It was really a battle of wills. So, at the next morning feed (being the hungriest one) I offered only the bottle, which was refused. But I kept offering it as the only option and, within two hours, it was gobbled down happily. When I was slack about keeping up the occasional bottle-feed with our other children, I had to go through that same process. Our second child held out for six hours, and our third baby objected for three hours. Indicative of personalities? Ha.