In the beginning, much of the newborn’s care is centered around eating. Parents feel successful when a baby is well fed, content, and growing, and yet there are many ways to achieve this goal. There have been studies supporting the benefits of breast feeding; therefore, mothers can feel pressure to breast feed their infant and expect nursing to be a satisfying and bonding experience. For some mothers breast feeding is or can become a rewarding experience that works easily for mother and baby. For other mothers, several challenges can interfere with a positive breast feeding experience: some women have difficulty producing enough milk, infants may have trouble latching onto the breast, mastitis (a common breast infection related to nursing) or sore, chapped nipples can make nursing painful. Mothers can feel guilty and conflicted when breast feeding does not go well. They need support around these feelings and help making choices that will enhance the feedings for both mother and baby.

Bottle feeding allows fathers to share the feedings and have the positive experience of feeding their baby. With exclusive bottle feeding, parents can worry that they are depriving their child of the health benefits and emotional bonding promoted by breast feeding enthusiasts; yet mothers can bond as positively with their babies by bottle feeding as they can with breast feeding. We have seen infants thrive from nursing as well as bottle feeding at our Center.

At the Pacella Parent Child Center, we listen closely to the mothers as they share their expectations, goals, and challenges around feeding. We find ways to help each mother make choices that fit her values and life style. Of course, we always consider the recommendations of the pediatrician when working with each mother and baby. Observing a baby with his or her parent also helps us know what might enhance the nursing or bottle feeding experience for each dyad. The support of the parent group is very helpful to the mothers as well. Group members share their feelings, successes and challenges, and with the help of the leader, support each mother to make her own decision about each developmental phase of feeding.

Each new feeding phase is suffused with a mother’s feelings about her own childhood experiences with food and nurturing. We help mothers sort through these feelings to help them enable their child have a healthy relationship with food.