It's a hard habit to break
Published Saturday May 30th, 2009
Call it a baby bottle, call it a bubba ... it matters not to Luke Riley, as long as he doesn't have to call it quits.
This little boy, who will turn three in July, is almost as passionate about it as he is about his pacifier.
He sucks on a soother throughout the day and he insists on drinking milk only from a baby bottle.
When he was born his mother, Wendy Riley, breastfed her oldest son until he was six months old. Then she started to wean him from the breast and fed him expressed breast milk from a baby bottle. The transition from breast to bottle, she recalls was difficult.
"He just didn't want anything to do with the bottle. So I tried different kinds of bottles to see if that would help," she says. "I think he just wanted the attachment and the closeness, especially throughout the night. When I did get him on the bottle through the day, I did keep nursing at night. It was hard on me that he wouldn't take it (the baby bottle)."
But eventually Luke took to a baby bottle; a little too well, it seems. She has tried to serve him milk from a sippy cup but he refuses to drink it from anything other than his "bubba" when he is home.
"He just loves the bottle so much; especially at night. It keeps him content and happy. I think at night he really wants it to help him calm down - lying there and drinking his bottle."
Wendy Riley knows it's time for him to break away from the baby bottle, but when she broaches the subject with him, he isn't happy with the idea.
"It depends on what mood he's in but mostly he says, 'No! I want my bubba. I want my bubba!' At night he is so persistent. When he's lying there drinking it, I think, 'Boy he's big to have a bottle,' but at the same time I'm thinking I don't care because he's still a baby."
When is the right time to wean your child from the breast or bottle?
Jo-Anne Elder-Gomes is a mother of seven who breastfed all of her children, including two sets of twins. This La Leche League leader works with new mothers to help them learn to breastfeed their babies. She says she thinks weaning from the breast or the bottle is something that should be a mutual decision between mother and child.
Mothers who decide to stop breastfeeding and switch to bottle-feeding, she says, might have difficulty with weaning their children from the bottle if their babies develop a habit of drinking from one. Sometimes a child who is being weaned from either the breast or a baby bottle might express some distress about it. Often she says toddlers need the emotional closeness that comes with a morning or evening feeding.
It's not uncommon, she says, for mothers to continue breastfeeding their preschoolers up to age three or four years old, she says.
Most breastfed babies start drinking other fluids from sippy cups along with their solid foods, whereas bottlefed babies often develop a habit of drinking all liquids from a bottle and have a much harder time breaking the baby bottle habit, she says.
Babies have a powerful sucking need that must be fulfilled for many reasons. The sucking provides comfort and helps aid in their emotional and intellectual development. As they approach the toddler years, however, this need is greatly diminished. Some toddlers make the transition to a cup with no problem whatsoever. Others, however, simply refuse to drink from anything other than a bottle.
Many pediatricians encourage parents to begin introducing the cup when they introduce juice to their baby. This will probably occur somewhere around six to eight months. This doesn't mean you need to stop breastfeeding or bottle-feeding your baby, but it may help him or her make the eventual switch to using a cup exclusively if you begin at an early age.
Elder-Gomes says her oldest child did end up with a bit of a baby bottle habit because he was drinking diluted apple juice from one.
"He continued wanting his bottle. I remember really trying to get him to drink out of a cup rather than the bottle because I was worried about his teeth. I was worried about him constantly sucking on this bottle with juice in it."
Elder-Gomes says she isn't bothered when she sees toddlers and preschoolers who are still breastfeeding or drinking from baby bottles. She says whatever works for the family is just fine.
"I do think sometimes we rush kids to grow up. Maybe the idea of getting rid of things like the soother and the bottle is part of our rush to get them to grow up and that's such a shame to have to do that because I think they should be babies for longer."
Whether it's a breast, a bottle or a soother, she says, children should be able to decide when they are ready to wean themselves.
A parent who is trying to wean their child from the breast or bottle, before the child is ready, she says, will probably have more trouble than if they wait for the child to decide when it's time to stop on their own.
"I think the child feels tension and they get really nervous about it. If the mother is thinking about how she can meet her baby's needs then the baby feels fully satisfied. The needs are met and then they can relax and move on."
Elder-Gomes didn't breastfeed her first baby as long as she did her youngest child. There were a number of factors that made it easier for her to continue breastfeeding her youngest longer than her oldest, she says.
Back when her oldest child was a baby, it wasn't as socially acceptable to breastfeed babies in public, she recalls.
Also, she says, when her youngest was a baby, she didn't work outside the home and was able to breastfeed whenever and wherever her youngest wanted, and needed, to suckle.
Elder-Gomes says some new mothers are sometimes overwhelmed when their babies are fussy in the evenings and want to nurse frequently or stay on the breast constantly. When women don't realize this is temporary, they lose their motivation to continue breastfeeding their babies for the first couple of years.
If babies don't properly latch on, a woman's breast can become sore. Having help from other mothers and lactation consultants can help a woman help her baby learn to latch onto the breast properly, preventing breast soreness, she says.
Help is available to new mothers with breastfeeding from the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital breastfeeding clinic or through the La Leche League.
"I think if mothers had the support, they virtually all would choose to breastfeed."
Many new mothers who come to La Leche League meetings say they are glad they continued to breastfeed their babies more than a couple of months because it gets easier and ends up being more convenient than bottle-feeding, which involves formula preparation and bottle sterilization.
Health Canada recommends babies be exclusively breastfed for the first six months.
Breast milk can supplement a baby's diet even after solid foods are introduced up to two years and beyond.
Disabled
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
