Someonent in the following link to an article, suggesting that the typical
facial characteristics of Down Syndrome are the result of bottle feeding:

Subject: interesting article on oral-motor development

http://www.kidscanlearn.net/down.htm


As the mother of a child with Down Syndrome, now 18 years of age, breastfed
for 4 months and then bottle-fed with formula, and having known many many
children over the years with DS, some of whom breastfed just fine for more
than 2 years, I have to say, that I think this article is completely
inaccurate.

Conductive hearing loss due to fluid buildup in children with Down Syndrome
is usually due to the tiny size of the Eustachian tubes, not to otitis
media.  Many children with Down Syndrome have hearing loss until they get
tubes, without ever having an ear infection.  Peter, for example, got his
first set of tubes at age 2.5 years, and his second set at 45 years, which
are still in place 14 years later because his Eustachian tubes never got big
enough for the tubes to fall out on their own.  He seldom had ear
infections, and only when he was older, long after the days of bottles.

Children with Down Syndrome tend to have many upper respiratory infections
because they have crummy immune systems, whether or not they are breastfed.
Their adenoids often don't resorb by adolescence the way they do in most
people, and can become chronically infected, leading to what we always
called "green slime disease" -- green snot coming out the nose from sinus
infections.  Removal of the tonsils and adenoids in adolescence will often
put an end to chronic upper respiratory infections in children with Down
Syndrome.

High narrow palate in children with Down Syndrome is the result of the two
sides of the palate being of normal size, while the rest of the face is
smaller.  The result is that when the originally upright sides are folding
down to meet in the midline, they "run into" each other sooner than they
should.  Imagine a drawbridge, where each side of the drawbridge is 10'
long, but the bridge is only 15 feet wide.  As the two sides come down, they
meet up in the air, instead of where they should to make a flat or slightly
arched road service.  Like this:  /\  instead of ___ .

In some ways, this is just the opposite of a cleft of the hard palate, where
the two sides are too short, so they come down all the way to horizontal,
but fail to meet in the middle, like a drawbridge with a 3' gap in the
middle.  Like this:  _  _ instead of __

Physical midline defects of all sorts are typical of children with Down
Syndrome, ranging from high palates to tracheo-esophageal fistula, to heart
defects, duodenal atresia, and small genitalia.

Children with Down Syndrome often have normal sized tongues, but small
mouths, which is why their tongues protrude.  It has nothing to do with
bottle-feeding, you can see it in photographs of minutes-old newborns.

Breastfed children with Down Syndrome have similar facial characteristics to
bottle-fed children with Down Syndrome.

And so on, and so forth.  It's a nice idea that if these kids were just
breastfed, they wouldn't have all these oral-facial physical issues, but it
just isn't true.  All the facial characteristics described as typical of
Down syndrome are due to the presence of an extra 21st chromosome (3 instead
of the normal 2), leading to all sorts of interesting physical differences,
including tiny cute ears and a big gap between the first and second toes.

Kathy Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Proud mother of Peter Hunter Dettwyler, XY +21

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