Dianne,

With all respect due to you & your profession,  I am sorry to disagree.
You propose to continue our bottle feeding culture with using the very
"crutch" that a mother would not need had we a culture that promoted
breastfeeding.  If the mother using a bottle for a couple more days so
she won't be weird ends up totally bf, then that is a happy ending.
Unfortunately, we live in the real world, & many if not the majority of
mothers who, once they begin to use bottles for any reason, may never
return to total breastfeeding.  Using a cup or other method, keeps that
separation of feeding methods more pronounced for the mother, not  making
the mother feel "replaced by a bottle."  Use of a bottle can then lead to
the "anybody can then feed the baby" syndrome, making the mother less
needed or special.

I guess I see this too much  in my lay experience, not many of the happy
endings. Recently I saw the above once again  with a mother with her 6th
child.  She had BF all previous children well into toddlerhood to age 2+.
 So, you would think that a day or two of help using a bottle with
formula (despite my discouragement - the weird factor I bet)  would not
have caused her much distress.  Yet, she ended up using the bottles more
& more to the point of many feedings a day.  She was so upset, but felt
powerless to do anything.  That is where the bottle culture acceptance is
so pervasive.  She just accepted that it was okay to continue instead of
feeling that she was weird (using bottles) & made more of an effort to
BF.   Surely, your patient base is numerically wider & statistically
varied compared to me.

With the management care of a HCP like yourself, I am sure that the above
can be avoided.  Most mothers in our area do not ever see LC's because
they live over an hour away, so there is no mangament of these moms when
supplementing.

Lora Gleaton, LLLL