Infant Cup Feeding May Have Health Effects
Posted on: Monday, 7 May 2007, 15:01 CDT
Feeding an infant using a cup can lead to longer hospital stays and possible health effects for premature infants, says an Australian review.
Traditionally, hospitals and parents have used bottles or tubes to feed infants when breastfeeding is not possible, but in some cases, hospitals have turned to cup feeding, in which a baby sips or laps milk in a small cup placed beneath the upper lip, according to lead researcher Anndrea Flint, a nurse manager at the Centre for Clinical Nursing of the Royal Women's Hospital in Brisbane.
The review, published in The Cochrane Library, examined four studies that involved preterm infants, born at 29 to 35 weeks, and said cup feeding cannot be recommended over bottle-feeding as a supplement to breastfeeding because it confers no significant benefit in maintaining breastfeeding beyond hospital discharge and carries the unacceptable consequence of a longer stay in the hospital.
One study found that cup-fed infants stayed in the hospital 59 days, while the bottle-fed group averaged about 48 days.
Source: United Press International
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