When my husband and I took our childbirth and breastfeeding classes at Medical Center of Plano before our daughter was born, they all warned us that if we want to successfully breastfeed we should abstain from giving her any bottles and pacifiers until she has established a successful nursing routine.Well, as is Becca's nursing routine was pretty terrible, she couldn't latch correctly for the life of her (nor with the help of the outstanding around the clock lactation consulting we received in the hospital). She rapidly lost weight in the first few days, more than the "acceptable" 10%. Worried that she was struggling to get enough nutrition, her pediatrician recommended supplementing with formula and we agreed. Then we figured, so much for our plan not to create the nipple confusion that we were warned about. Once this barrier was broken we figured we were also open to giving her a pacifier. Seeing how much this soothed her we were happy we made that choice. We know it will be tough to wean her off of it (I have several friends who have struggled terribly with that) but if she's soothed now, I'm happy. We also have used several different shapes and sizes of nipples when bottlefeeding (both formula and pumped milk), including the Similac nipple, the Medela nipple, the Avent nipple and a couple others. Pretty much whatever we have received free samples of in the mail or from the hospital. We are equal opportunity freebie recipients. And thankfully, Becca happily drank from them all.
Making the rounds on Monday was this article saying that feelings are beginning to change when it comes to nipple confusion and that its possible that pacifiers may even help with breast-feeding. I believe there was indeed a connection between her use of the pacifier in her first few weeks that helped her learn to establish a suck and is one of the reasons that I was able to reintroduce Becca to nursing at 8 weeks, something she hadn't successfully done since we had left the hospital.
So what do you think? Does nipple confusion really exist? What was your experience with your little one?
Nice blog! Perhaps nipple confusion is a misnomer. I believe there is truth to nipple rejection. Ava took a bottle during the early weeks (beginning around week 3 or 4) when I found it necessary to give my clamped nipples a break. We haven't used a bottle in about two months and now she rejects it with certainty. Same thing happened with the pacifier - we suspected it make the clamping worse and got rid of it - now she rejects it. (we tried various shapes/sizes) I think it's more like: "you can't teach an 'old' baby new tricks." Thankfully Becca is a a multi-talented baby when it comes to nipples!
ReplyDeleteHow about... "you can't teach an 'old' baby new nipples?" :)
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