Infant Feeding Instructions: Fill & Download for Free

When my sister was a very new mom with a prematurely-born infant whom she was instructed to stuff with milk should he offer the slightest bit of interest in it, she could not figure out how to leave the house. She felt like she was failing as a mother for being unable to negotiate the logistics. When I went out to visit and help for a week, I kept a log of her schedule to help her figure out why she was having a hard time. This is what I discovered.She was very shy about about nursing in company and felt it was her obligation to be shut up in the nursery (never mind just being in the house) whenever he needed to eat.She spent 8–10 hours out of every 24 just managing the feeding and related aftercare of her son.Keeping an infant fed is not a trivial bit of business. They don’t eat ~3 times a day like adults. Requiring women to be out of sight when they feed their children either requires them to be prisoners in their own homes, or it requires them to nurse in uncomfortable or unsanitary surroundings. No. Other people’s discomfort is much less important than an infant’s need to be fed, and its right to be fed in clean surroundings.

“Frederick’s Experiment”[1][2][3] [4] is the most twisted and heartless scientific experiment I’ve come across.A man parading himself as a “Holy” Roman Emperor, Frederick II, wanted to identify the language used by Adam & Eve. He decided that the best way to figure it out was to use newborn babies as his personal guinea pigs. He conducted a heinous experiment in order to discover what language children would “naturally” speak if they had never heard any language or been spoken to at all. (It’s easy to see where this is going.)So King Fuckstick took babies from their mothers at birth and had nurses, who were forbidden from speaking anywhere near them, attending to their basic needs. But then, being the lovable guy that he was, he decided to up the ante. The nurses were also forbidden from touching the infants.But alas, Frederick’s experiment didn’t get him any closer to figuring out what Adam & Eve’s language had been. As you probably already guessed, the babies spoke no language at all - because they all died.You could say they died from a lack of love. Physical contact and affection are just as vital to babies as food and shelter.Love = LifeGot it. There’s no need for any other helpless babies to die to prove that, right?Well… in 1944 a similar experiment was conducted in the United States.[5] Forty newborn infants were experimented on to see if they could survive without affection. <facepalm> (Apparently, these fellas learned nothing from the 800 years of accumulated human knowledge that occurred between the two experiments.)Twenty newborn infants were kept in a testing facility where they had caregivers who would only interact with them when changing their diapers, feeding or bathing them. The caregivers had been told to never speak to - or around - the babies. They were also instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than the bare minimum required to care for them.*pictures are not from the actual experiment.After about 4 months over half of the babies were dead. Two more babies died even after being rescued and shown regular affection. Before dying, the babies stopped trying to engage their caregivers. They wouldn’t verbalize in any way, no longer even crying. They also stopped moving and wouldn’t even change their facial expressions. Needless to say, they would die soon after.The twenty babies from the second group had all of their basic needs provided as well, but they were also given affection from the caregivers. None of those babies died.All of the babies were physically healthy, even those who died. It’s almost like the neglected babies simply didn’t want to live in a world without love - so they gave up and died.Moral of the story: Humans suck.Image credits: (*Not from the actual experiment)Penn U.time toastpinterestFootnotes[1] Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor - Wikipedia[2] Internet History Sourcebooks Project[3] Language deprivation experiments - Wikipedia[4] Emperor Frankenstein: The Truth Behind Frederick II of Sicily's Sadistic Science Experiments[5] US Experiment on infants withholding affection

We made him very gassy and uncomfortable.When I was pregnant, I constantly debated breastfeeding or formula feeding. I was concerned because both my husband and I had needed to be on soy formula as infants and was concerned that my son would have similar sensitivities. I was also worried about the possibility of breastfeeding in public because I am a very modest person and I didn't feel comfortable with breastfeeding in public. I decided that I wanted to do a combination of both breast and bottle feeding, supplementing with formula if need be.So when I asked my doctor, they told me in no uncertain terms that breast was best.When I asked our prenatal instructor about bottle feeding, I was told that the class would only focus on breastfeeding and if I wanted to learn about bottle feeding and formula, I could read up about it.So yeah, when we were trying to induce labour, I was anxious about afterwards. If breastfeeding would naturally occur with skin to skin. If I'd produce enough milk. If I'd feel comfortable with it.As it turned out, I needed an emergency c-section. I briefly held my son before he was whisked away. It was 2 hours before I saw him again. The young nurses, who had probably never had kids, tried to instruct me. But I could see my little boy was desperate for food and was having difficulty latching. I was out of it. Drugged up and dazed. All I could think was that he needs food. I told the nurses to get me some formula. They obliged and got me a ready-to-feed bottle. My little one happily guzzled back half of it. We continued bottle feeding him. It was a relief to me when my husband could feed him while I rested. My husband tried to ask questions about formula feeding, but the hospital staff was pretty vague about it.We spent two nights at the hospital and then we went home. On the way, my husband stopped at the store to pick up the same brand of formula the hospital gave, only he grabbed powder instead of ready to feed. I had two Playtex bottles with liners that I got as free samples that we would use until we figured out what he preferred and the old ready to feed bottles.I poured over books and tried to follow the instructions on sterilizing the bottles. Tried to follow mixing instructions. Storing instructions. It was a nightmare.I was frazzled, scared to do wrong by my son as I already felt insecure about formula feeding him. My husband was just as clueless. My infant was screaming and gassy and miserable. Burping him helped a little, but not much.The health nurse followed up the next day and we were told that powder was often hard on the stomachs of newborns and we should try ready to feed (expensive) or liquid concentrate (slightly cheaper). So we did. He was still gassy.And then, my parents were over that night. Baby was fussy, so I give my dad a bottle to feed to his grandson. My husband and I watched in fascination as my dad reached into the bottom of the bottle to push the air out of the plastic liner, something me and my husband hadn't been doing because we didn't know.It was like magic. Baby was no longer a gassy, miserable mess.I felt relieved and yet, I felt cheated. I felt like I was denied information when I asked about formula feeding and as a result, I didn't know enough to keep my baby comfortable in his first few days.After much trial and error, we ended up devising a system that worked for us and one that we will be able to implement again should we need it when we decide to expand our family once more.