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You are here:
Propping
a baby with a bottle
Don't do it!
- You might think it'd be convenient to prop your baby with a
bottle and go about your business. There are even commercial
products designed especially for this purpose.
- This harms your baby in many ways.
- One of the great benefits of breastfeeding is that it promotes
contact between mother and child. If you decide to bottle-feed,
you should try to do the same--hold
your baby close, look into her or his eyes, stroke her or his
back--all these things come naturally during breastfeeding, and
are good for a baby's psychological and intellectual
development.
- If you prop a baby with a bottle, you are depriving her or him
from this benefit of breastfeeding.
- A young baby propped with a bottle may choke. If you're going
about your own business, who's going to notice the baby?
- If you give your baby anything other than water (juice, milk,
formula) in a propped bottle, you'll be promoting dental caries.
Milk drips from a bottle on its own and pools around the front
teeth. This causes cavities. This is so common that it is called
the bottle-mouth syndrome.
- If your baby has asthma (which a bottle-fed baby is much more
likely to have than an exclusively breastfed one), there is a
serious risk of inhalation pneumonia from a propped bottle.
- If you thought you were going to bottle-feed because propping
your baby with a bottle would be convenient, I hope you have
changed your mind! It is one of the great advantages for
breastfeeding for a baby that you cannot detach your breast from
yourself. The baby needs you, not a piece of plastic.
Back to the breastfeeding
page.
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