What is the best way to get a premature baby to breast-feed?
Breast-feeding is a natural process, but it doesn’t always happen naturally, especially with babies born prematurely. There are several techniques to get a preemie used to taking milk from his mother’s breast, including using a pacifier, a bottle, a medicine cup, or a tube to feed the baby or let him practice sucking. Researchers from a hospital in South Australia studied the effect of these surrogate breasts to see how they affected a baby’s transition to breast-feeding. What the researchers wanted to know: Does giving a preemie bottles, pacifiers, and cups make the baby more or less likely to breast-feed? What they did: The scientists enrolled about 300 mothers and their infants, who were all born between 23 and 33 weeks of pregnancy (at least four weeks before their due date). Women were assigned to a cup or bottle-feeding group soon after the birth of their baby, and within those groups to pacifier or no pacifier. They all breast-fed when they could, and either a bottle or cup was
