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Hello,
I saw on your website that you guys are encouraging parents to share their feeding journey and I thought I would share mine.
My baby was born March 6, 2021, after 48 hours of labor which resulted in a c-section, just shy of 39 weeks gestation. She was 6 pounds 3 ounces and healthy as can be. My plan was always to breastfeed, so the lactation consultants (LCs) in the hospital helped me right away with latching. We discovered a tongue tie and that was corrected when we left the hospital.
Paced bottle feeding is a wildly popular bottle feeding technique that is promoted as the best way to feed babies who are breastfed. When I did a google search for paced bottle feeding, there were a whopping 572,000,000 results! What’s more, definitions of paced bottle feeding techniques varied significantly, often contradicting each other, and there were many unproven claims to promoting paced feeding.
As a 31-year NICU nurse and lactation consultant, I’m mystified why paced feeding for healthy term babies has become the norm. Pace feeding is a therapeutic feeding technique primarily used for medically complex and premature babies whose suck, swallow, and breathe (SSB) reflex is not coordinated or matured, which is essential to bottle-feed without aspirating milk into the lungs.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and global infant feeding guidelines advocate and promote responsive feeding, which is uniquely different from paced feeding. Full-term, healthy babies are born with their SSB coordination fully developed and can responsive bottle feed safely.
Mothers who experienced delayed onset of milk production or experienced low milk supply with their first baby often contact us for support to try breastfeeding again. They typically have anticipatory anxiety because they have lost trust in their lactation professionals and hospital staff and are unwilling to attempt breastfeeding again without supplementation. They want to know how to supplement their baby until their milk supply becomes sufficient to feed them safely while providing proper breastfeeding stimulation for optimal milk production.
As soon as the word “formula” rolls off your tongue and leaves your mouth for everyone to hear, uncomfortable silence occurs. Parents are reluctant to talk about or admit freely they feed their babies infant formula. Most are suffering from the deeply entrenched shame and judgment that is associated with formula feeding; they have experienced it first hand in countless social media parenting groups, from friends, their health care professionals, WIC offices, and even in their hospitals.
How did we get to the place where talking about infant formula is profoundly divisive, shameful, and anxiety provoking for parents?
Let’s face it, infant FORMULA is the new seven letter F word. The scarlet letter F. FAILURE.
My beautiful baby girl Mary-Kate was delivered by emergency c-section, and although there were complications during labor, she was healthy on arrival. Having done a bit of research and listened to the advice of professionals, as well as the threat of the global pandemic posing a risk, I decided I would breastfeed my daughter, to provide her with passive antibodies for COVID-19 from my milk.
