I'd love to see ultrasound studies done of cup feeding. I saw Chloe Fisher's wonderful videos of ultrasounds of bottle and breastfeeding -- baby's tongue is an awesome thing to see! I have seen the video showing the babies lap the milk from the cup -- they can do it. It is a very different tongue/jaw movement from breastfeeding or bottle-feeding, but there's no doubt milk is going in, and you can see/hear baby swallowing. Also, we've heard lots of anecdotal studies here on LactNet of babies being cupfed and then peeing, pooping, and gaining weight, so the milk *must* be going into the stomach the way it's supposed to. Since many baby bottles actively drip milk into the child's mouth, and the child sucks with only the very tip of the nipple in their mouth, I don't see how cup feeding is any different from bottle-feeding in terms of where the bolus of milk is located, and the cup feeding, since it is under the infant's control, seems to be less dangerous in terms of aspiration. I have seen many instances of bottle-feeding babies sputtering and choking from the bottle. And we all know that formula is bad stuff -- in the lungs as well as the stomach, whereas breast milk is full of antibodies and antibacterial and antiviral agents. As usual here on LactNet, I challenge those who are skeptical of cup feeding to find me a scientific study showing any evidence that aspiration of breast milk has ever led to lung necrosis. I have also never heard of this "flexion reflex" that supposedly lasts until 3-4 months (but then again, I'm an anthropologist). We all know that even into late adulthood people relexively curl up in the fetal position when in emotional or physical distress, so this isn't something that "goes away" at 3-4 months -- it never goes away, in some sense. It is also an instinctive reaction to a physical threat, as the fetal position protects the head/face, the breasts, the belly, the genitals, and presents the parts of the body to the attacker that are most protected by enclosing bone (or quills if you're a porcupine). I'm still not clear what it has to do with feeding, except that we know that flexing baby's hips helps them feed at the breast if they are disorganized and distraught. Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition Texas A&M University