Martha asks:

> One question that was asked during peds section meeting was why are
> fingers ok and pacifiers aren't? "
>
> In my opinion, fingers are not exactly OK either. If the baby is looking to
> satisfy the suck needs, then they should be met at the breast, no???? The
> sucking of fingers is a means of the baby's communicating its needs to the
> mom, who responds by offering the breast.
>
> I tell my moms that pacifiers are part of the bottle-feeding culture
> mentality. The baby who sucks down a bottle so fast, due to the way a
> nipple works, needed someplace else to meet his suck needs, so the pacifier
> is offered. Breastfed babies, who mix nutritive suckling with non-nutritive
> suckling, have little or no need to suck elsewhere (exception: mom too sore
> to allow extra non-nutritive suck until healed).
>
> The bottle-feeding culture gives us other ideas that we (as a culture in
> the US) assume to be normal for babies.....how about the feeding intervals
> of every 4 hours?? how about using smelly things like powder & lotions to
> make babies smell nice??  How about those *&^%$ weight charts?


I use these examples when I teach breastfeeding classes to try and get people
to use
> breastfed babies as the reference norm instead of reverting to the
> bottle-feeding mentality.
>
> Just my own opinions, of course.


Kathy Rubin in NJ
IBCLC, RN, BC (Maternal/Infant), APN, C (Family Nurse Practitioner)
PhD student hopng to study lactation issues someday
who is searching for a research topic for dissertation,and considering a
qualitative study on looking at what it is like to be a breastfeeding mom in
a bottle-feeding culture!!! Any opinions/suggestions -- please email me
privately!!

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