Is feeding from the breast harder/more work for babies

[Ieattoomuchcake]

Didn't want to hijack the current thread about mixed feeding, but I noticed on there a few folk saying that babies have to work harder to get milk from the breast than they do from a bottle.

I guess it probably depends which teat you use, as I think some drip even when baby isn't sucking.

But my experience implies that baby maybe works harder when they're having growth spurts etc and 'putting in their order', but in general my DD latches on, gets the let down going and lies there gulping.

Is it a myth that breast is harder than bottle??

No idea - babies can't tell us.

But it's very clear that even if you see it as "work", it's something that is well within a baby's capabilities, and and also something which is liked.

It depends.

When breastfeeding is going well, a healthy, term baby does not have to 'work' any more than breathing is 'work'. The breasts let down milk in response to his sucking and he is not having to suck every drop out - a lot of it just comes to him and he just has to swallow it :)

Bottles do drip milk, depending on the teat, but at the angle normally held for the baby, the drip are small and slow, and continued milk availability requires the active participation of the baby's jaws and tongue.

This not necessarily arduous for the baby, either.

But I do think it is a myth that babies find bottles easier - as far as I know there is no evidence for this. Work done on pre-term babies shows their heart rate and breathing is more stable when breastfeeding than when bottle feeding.

I don't know, but I do know that DS2 has a heart defect, and that the consultant told me when he was in heart failure (10 days old) that the effort he was making to bf was exhausting him, and that this was one of the things that alert HCPs to signs of heart failure in a baby. Imagine this would be the same whether breast or bottle feeding though.

DOn't know. Ancedotally though, my ds couldn't work out a bottle at all. Boob he was a natural at, so in his case, a bottle was certainly harder work

Not sure abuot scientific evidence, but my two HATED the bottle and would only BF. They certainly didn't have to put any huge effort into sucking. At times, the milk was spurting out of my boobs. ( I was feeding in the back seat of a parked car once and somehow boob came out of LO's mouth - milk hit the windscreen!!)

YOu will get as many different answers as posters, so I guess the answer to this one is every baby and every mum is different and you need to do what works for you .

When my DD was having feeding issues early on (after a scbu start) we had to give bottle top-ups as she could get more milk in a far shorter time with a bottle (trying to ebf too early led to more weight loss). She wasn't an efficient feeder at first so to get enough milk from the breast took so long she didn't have enough time to sleep.

Now we've got latch and positioning sorted and she's bigger, it's different but bottle feeds still take less time typically.

My understanding is that it is physically harder work, but that that's actually one of the beneficial aspects in that it develops the facial and jaw muscles and ensures that the eustachian tubes are functioning properly, which is why breastfed babies tend to have far fewer ear infections.

Yes, I think breastfed babies end up with better tongue and jaw muscles, which is better for language development.