Choosing to bottle-feed
Mother's milk is important to your baby, but it is not as important as your love. Fill the hours you spend with your baby, particularly feeding times, with your love, affection and care. These are just as important to your baby's physical and emotional well-being as your milk.
© Jupiter
Most women feel pressure to breast-feed their babies, and worry quite a lot if they decide not to, but there are some good reasons for deciding that breast-feeding is not for you. Despite your very best efforts you may simply not be successful at it. In that case, the best thing is to forget about it and concentrate on giving your baby a good bottle-fed diet: he will do just as well.
Other women find it emotionally or psychologically difficult, some feel that they may be too tied down by a breast-feeding routine and that it will curtail many of their activities, including return to work. Some couples are opposed to it because it excludes the father.
One of the good things about bottle-feeding is that the new father can be just as involved as a new mother at feeding times. Make sure that your partner feeds the baby very soon after you get home from the hospital, so that he gets used to the technique and isn't afraid to handle the baby. The sooner he learns to do all the things that your baby needs the better. If possible your partner should share the feeding equally with you. If not, he should give at least two out of the six feeds a day.
New Babycare
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © 2009 Miriam Stoppard
Posted 30.06.2010
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