I would be very concerned with the protection of my license if I recommended or taught a mother to use a bottle nipple as a shield. In the hospital, years ago , it was common practice to make pacifiers out of bottle nipples. Because of infants choking risks and I think I remember a couple of true cases that this not only happened but due to the infants demise and subsequent litigation there were warnings sent for this practice to be discontinued. I think that no matter how well we think we teach the mom to hang on to the bottle nipple, its a significantly dangerous practice and unfair to place mothers/infants in this kind of risk. Especially for those of us who should be using the most skilled practice techniques available for supporting breastfeeding families. IMHO- if you feel the need to grab a bottle nipple to use as a shield, you should be using the correct tool designed for such use- a real nipple shield. To me, using a bottle nipple as a shield is no different than teaching a mom to hook up her vacumn cleaner to her breastpump to make it suck stronger- sounds like it may work but fraught with real risks. Lisa J RN CLE IBCLC Tacoma, WA *********************************************** 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(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html