One of the things that my wife and I have found very frustrating is the lack of information about feeding breast milk using the pump and bottle method. There is clear evidence that there is a great deal of benefit to breast milk (see here) both in the early month as well as long term (up to a year).

But what about the baby doesn’t like to or has trouble nursing at the breast? If you look in the parenting book, they all talk about breast feeding and assume that you are nursing. Some of them will have a small section about expressing milk and feeding with a bottle, but usually its talked about in terms of being able to give mom a break from nursing. There isn’t any real discussion about breast milk via the bottle as a standard feeding method. Most of the time the only thing they do mention is not to use the bottle too much because the baby gets confused about the nipple and may stop nursing. But what if you aren’t nursing…

I posed this dilema to our pediatrician, and her answer was very direct. “It’s ok”. Well, how hard was that? Why couldn’t one of these great minds behind the books that all us new parents use include that information?

In the end, if it feels right, it probably is right. Its clear that breast milk has many benefits over formula. And how you get it into your child is less important. If you can nurse, then do it, but if it just doens’t work out (and trust me, it is a lot harder than you might think) and you can pump and feed by the bottle, do it. Its good for you, its good for the baby and that’s all that really matters.