Becky Butler asked if maybe using a bottle might help moms with babies
with no latch hang on a little longer.  Absolutely!

It's like we say with contraceptives-- the best contraceptive for any
particular woman is the one she is going to use. If something has
superior contraceptive rates but she won't use it, or won't use it
correctly, then the one she likes is a better choice, even if its
success rate isn't quite as good.

Same thing with alternative feeding methods. I inform, demo, etc about
various methods, but have only had a few moms use them for more than a
few days to a week, some really try hard and others want nothing to do
with them from the beginning, but, gee, they are working hard enough at
all that pumping, not to mention dealing with all the coaxing and work
on latch.

The best alternative feeding method is the one the parents feel
comfortable with. Bottle feeding has been modeled to them all their
lives, it's one thing thing they can do without a struggle in an
otherwise very difficult time.

All alternative feeding methods have their drawbacks, and I figure if
parents feel more comfortable with bottle, we'll take our gamble, and if
baby develops a preference, then we'll have a demonstrable reason for
parents to want to try an alternative, and the motivation will be
higher, Cross that bridge when/if we get to it.

I also think that because society is so accepting of the bottle, that
helps these parents, because they're doing something familiar.

At the same time, that societal approval of the bottle has I think made
us, in the lactation field, unnecessarily critical of it. Yes it has its
problems, as do finger feeding, nipple shields, tube feeding, syringe
feeding, and even cupfeeding, etc.

Imagine for a moment a world where formula was just as all pervasive and
in the way as it is now, but all these formula feeding parents were
cupfeeding their infants formula with a sippy cup. Only suck these poor
infants got was at the pacifier. No one had ever heard of a bottle. LCs
are trying to increase BF rates, deal with latch, fight formula, fight
sippy cups, etc. Don't you think that if an LC invented the bottle, with
a rubber/silicone nipple, solely as an alternative feeding method, and
the rest of society thought was this nipple was wierd, don't you think
some of us would grab onto it and think it was the greatest thing since
the SNS, and others would scorn it, and we'd have big camps of LCs using
it and others rolling their eyes?

It's just another method. Parents are comfortable with it.

Most of the moms I have had who hung in there for weeks, pumping and
waiting for baby to decide to latch, were bottle feeding, either from
the beginning, or after a good (or halfhearted) try with one or two
other methods. And those bottlefed babies did all latch on.

It's just another alternative feeding method. We can't let our soapboxes
get in the way of helping moms.

Tina Smillie