I agree and disagree with you Lara. Babies don't bond with bottles, they do bond/attach to people. The original statement was incorret. But I disagree that bottle feeding is the same in terms of developing the relationship as bottle feeding. The observations that I have are from pretty extreme circumstances, children that have been neglected or abused prior to adoption and are then breastfed. Many of these children have been bottle fed by their adoptive mother but initiation of breastfeeding does things for the development of the relationship between mother and child that bottle feeding does not. Part of this is to do with the skin to skin contact of breastfeeding but I'm pretty sure there are other components of breastfeeding that facilitate these changes. These children are very sensitive, in some ways I think of them as the canary in the coal mine.... they show us stuff that is not obvious in 'normal' babies/children. However, when it comes down to it, though breastfeeding can be highly significant by far the most important thing in terms of developing a strong attachment baby-mum is for the baby to experience sensitive, responsive parenting from her mother. The limited research in this areas suggest that breastfeeding mothers are better at this but rather than the act of breastfeeding being the most important thing it is probable that breastfeeding mothers are more sensitive because breastfeeding generally requires the mother to be in close physical proximity to her baby. Having that close physical proximity (slings are the best for this) is way way way more important than breastfeeding when it comes to attachment. Karleen Gribble Australia > This is something I wanted to say last time it came up, but I held my > tongue. Some people here seem to be claiming that a baby fed via a > bottle "bonds with the bottle, not with the parent". As a > bottle-feeding mother of an exclusively breastfed six-month-old, I find > it offensive, but that's as may be. As a scientist, I find it > inaccurate. *********************************************** 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