10 essential information to know about the Baby Bottle

Bottle-feeding also allows for great closeness to your baby.

You may very well have a fusion report with your child by bottle-feeding. The correctness of the famous phrase “better to bottle feed happily than reluctantly breast” no longer needs to be demonstrated. What is preventing you from bottle-feeding your child by wrapping him tenderly in your arms, eye-to-eye, caressing him, making this meal? a privileged moment of exchange between you ? Note that with the bottle, the dad can also play his part in feeding his baby and, through it, also initiate this fusional relationship early on.

Infant milk is digestible

Even if the infant swallows much more air by drinking infant formula than by breastfeeding, infant milk is most often well digested. But sometimes the baby may have difficulty, or even cannot stand cow’s milk protein. It is up to your pediatrician to decide if your baby needs specific milk. To know : breastfed babies can also get colic, the causes of which are still fairly obscure today: immaturity of the digestive system, poor regulation of sleep and oxygenation, etc.

From the bottle, no need to respect strict schedules

Since artificial milk is digested more slowly than breast milk, we generally recommend a specific number of bottles and quantity of milk per day. So much for the principle. In reality, nothing stands in the way of you adjust the rhythms of the meals and the quantities given at the request of your newborn baby during the first weeks, if he is born at term and in good health. It is even recommended. Thereafter, nothing forces you to live with your eye on the clock. For example, if your child is sleeping, there is no need to wake him up because “it is time”. He will make up for it in the next bottle. What to watch out for, especially at first, is how much milk he absorbs over several days, not in a single day.

At night, we make our lives easier by giving a briquette of milk

Breast or bottle, it is advisable to keep your baby near you at night (in the same room), especially right after birth, when he asks for food very often. To avoid the chore of dosing powdered milk and reheating at 2 a.m., with the screams of your hungry toddler in the background, you always have the solution to give him a briquette of infant milk ready to go. ‘use at room temperature.

Bottle: to heat milk, no microwave

Even during the day, you don’t have to heat the milk. But, if you prefer to cool it down, it is true that you should not exceed 32 to 35 ° C. As for the heating method, one constraint: forget the microwave, likely to cause burns. It is better to opt for a bottle warmer or for heating in a water bath.

We don’t have to sterilize the bottles

According to a recommendation from ANSES (National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety), “ bottle and teats do not need to be sterilized as has long been advocated. »After use, all you have to do is empty and rinse the bottle and its attachments (no screw, teat, cap), in order to remove the milk residues, then wash them thoroughly. Either with hot water and washing-up liquid, or in the dishwasher (at 65 ° C).

Infant milks don’t taste bad

Certainly, no “artificial” milk can compete with the taste and, above all, with the diversity of aromas of breast milk. Nevertheless, their flavors have improved over the years. If your baby does not seem to like a milk, you are free to change it, among the 300 existing references!

Complementary bottles: they do not compromise breastfeeding

You can give a complementary bottle without jeopardizing breastfeeding. There is certainly a risk of confusion for the baby between the breast and the nipple of the bottle, the second flowing more easily than the first, and the position of the tongue on the pacifier or the breast being different. But that’s not because of the infant milk itself. So, if you want to give your baby extra milk, it is better to do it with a cup, a spoon, a pipette or a finger.

Mixed breastfeeding does not prevent continued breastfeeding

Mixed breastfeeding does not necessarily complicate breastfeeding. We can combine the two, except during the initiation phase of breastfeeding, the first month. But it is true that from the moment the baby no longer sucks exclusively at the breast, lactation is likely to decrease. In any case, a piece of advice: never bottle-feed before a feed.

Today, plastic bottles are safe

In France and in the European Union, the manufacture and sale of plastic baby bottles containing bisphenol A is strictly prohibited. This chemical compound used in food plastics would act as an endocrine disruptor, responsible for hormonal and neuronal disorders (cancer, obesity, behavioral disorders, etc.). The bottles undergo numerous quality controls.