Have You Heard of Nipple Confusion?!

Nipple confusion, hmm . . . this term can be somewhat misleading. It does not mean that your baby is perplexed as to what your nipple is for. It is a term to explain when babies are hesitant to feed from the breast and seems to prefer or find it easier to bottle feed milk which has been expressed. With bottle teats there is always a reservoir of milk held in them, the teats are usually quite rigid and this can help some babies feed more easily. When your baby is breastfeeding she must open her mouth, latch on and then use approximately forty facial muscles consistently to enable herself to get a tummy full of milk. If your baby seems unwilling to breastfeed it is not because she has forgotten how to suck as she was born with an instinct to do so, and it is not because she is rejecting you. There are many reasons why she could be finding it difficult. The most common reason is that she is struggling to latch on. If your baby is finding it too difficult to latch onto your nipple then it is advisable to seek advice from your midwife or health visitor. They will either help you or point you in the right direction of a breastfeeding expert who will probably tell you to bottle feed your baby with your own expressed milk for the interim until they can assist you. By expressing your own milk you are keeping the flow coming of your own milk and the bottle feeding of it will give you some time until you have both mastered latching on. A breastfeeding expert will show you how to encourage your baby to feed from a bottle in the same way as she would from your nipple. Your baby will have to open her mouth wide for the bottle teat and her tongue must be down and forward. Now, if your baby is breastfeeding successfully do not be worried about occasionally letting her feed from a bottle of your expressed milk. You may hear people say that your baby should drink expressed milk from a cup but it does not usually matter whether it is from a cup or a bottle and certainly either way is the next best thing to breastfeeding. If you are expressing your milk then attempt to express the normal amount she has from you over a period of a day so that your breasts continue to produce the same amount and you will not feel uncomfortably full. It is not usual for nipple confusion to cause breastfeeding issues. Problems such as breast refusal and sore nipples are often blamed on nipple confusion but are more likely to happen because your baby is struggling to latch on. Practice, good advice and help from a professional expert should help you and your baby. There are some babies born with tongue-tie and this condition makes it difficult to breastfeed. Also very firm breast tissue which is difficult for a baby to mold into a teat shape can make breastfeeding more challenging but neither of these problems are nipple confusion. By Eirian Hallinan