It is only helpful to use a bottle nipple over the breast to help with latch-on in cases with a baby who is solidly on bottles and has resisted all other attempts to get him to take the breast. Often, the baby also freaks out when attempts are made to put him into position facing right into the breast. This is a common situation with babies who are adopted at an older age, or have otherwise spent along of time without feeding at the breast. Often, the bottle nipple is used in conjunction with a nursing supplementer, with the tube threaded through the hole in the bottle nipple, so that the baby will get a steady flow of milk when he sucks. I can't imagine these circumstances would exist amoung babies in a newborn nursery. I would think putting a bottle nipple over the breast would just create problems with newborns. If the baby really couldn't latch without something over the breast, a nipple shield would be a much, much better choice than a bottle nipple. Besides creating nipple confusion, using a bottle nipple without a tube threaded through would probably not allow the baby to get a steady flow of milk, and risk teaching the baby a negative association with the breast. This almost sounds like something someone would do if they did not want to have to be bothered helping mothers breastfeed. Either that, or they knew absolutely nothing about breastfeeding! You ladies who work in hospitals must have to bite your tongues an awful lot, in the face of so many harmful and inappropriate practices you see happening! Darillyn _________________________________________________________________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfeeŽ Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html