Hesperian Health Guides
Why Other Feeding Can Be Harmful
HealthWiki > Where Women Have No Doctor > Chapter 7: Breastfeeding > Why Other Feeding Can Be Harmful
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| Bottle-fed babies are more likely to get sick and die. |
Companies that make artificial milk (infant formula) want people to feed their babies formula instead of breast milk so the companies can make money. Using bottles or giving formula is often unsafe. Millions of babies fed with bottles or formula have become malnourished or sick, and many die.
Feeding with formula is often a way a father or partner participates in a baby’s care. To encourage breastfeeding, help family members find other ways to care for a baby.
- Formula and other milks, such as tinned milk or the milk of animals, do not protect babies from disease.
- Formula and other milks can cause sickness and death. If the bottle, nipple, or water used to make the formula is not boiled long enough, the baby will swallow harmful germs and get diarrhea.
- When babies drink from the breast, they use their tongue to suckle, or “milk” the breast. It is very different from what a baby’s mouth does when sucking on a bottle. By sucking on a bottle the baby may forget how to suckle well on the breast. And if the baby does not suckle on the breast enough, the milk supply will decrease, and the baby will stop feeding from the breast completely.
- Bottle-feeding costs a lot of money. For one baby, a family would need 40 kg of formula powder in the first year. Buying a day’s worth of formula and enough fuel to boil water can cost more than the family earns in a week—or even a month.
| Do not try to make milk or formula last longer by using less powder or more water. This starves the baby, making it grow more slowly and get sick more often. |
Can I really buy all this in one year?
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This page was updated:13 Nov 2023