Learn All About The Pirate Bottle
Although the term “pirate bottle” may sound strange, it is actually very common.
After the first hours of birth, many things can happen. One of them has to do with the production of breast milk. When this is delayed or does not sprout abundantly, the baby’s feeding is compromised and that is when the pirate bottle intervenes.
When the pirate bottle intervenes
Once the delivery is complete, the woman experiences the familiar: rise in milk. This is the process in which the milk begins to come out of your breasts in order to feed your baby.
However, the time it takes for this to happen can vary. There are cases in which the increase in milk can occur in a few hours and, on the other hand, there are cases of women who take days to experience the increase in milk.
Often, nurses in the maternity ward give newborns bottles unofficially to make sure they are well fed. This practice is known as the pirate bottle.
While the intention of nurses is noble, there are times when the administration of this type of bottle can be harmful to the newborn. In some cases, it can lead to certain allergies to the protein in formula milk.
The use of the pirate bottle
The use of the pirate bottle has caused great controversy. This is because, when mothers do not yet have the milk surge, they do have the so-called colostrum, a substance that is considered much better than formula milk to feed the baby.
There have been cases in which the mother has begun to breastfeed the baby and has been forced to give this type of bottle. There are even some occasions when medical personnel feed the baby without the mother’s consent.
Luckily, this practice is currently deprecated. Although there are many women who have confessed that their children were given these bottles as soon as they were born. They know it by having surprised doctors and nurses at the precise moment they were giving it to them.
The dangers of practice
Giving a pirate bottle to a newborn is dangerous, since lactose milk is not one of the foods that small newborns accept in their body. Above all, in the cases of premature babies, there is a total intolerance to some of the proteins in milk.
Milk protein intolerance has a wide variety of factors that are not always easy to explain or identify. Therefore, experts do not agree on how harmful the pirate bottle can be for newborns.
In general, intolerance depends on genetic predisposition and the nature of the antigen. Also of the frequency with which it is administered, or of the age when consuming it for the first time. In addition, the baby’s own immune status influences, or if the mother consumed this type of milk during pregnancy.
This type of intolerance occurs when the baby does not associate the milk proteins. Their body considers them enemies and acts against them. This is when the immunoglobulin is secreted. And it is also when the first symptoms of allergy can appear.
Medical personnel do not always opt for the administration of feeding through the pirate bottle.
Types of allergies that can develop
- One of them is related to genetic inheritance.
- Non-atopic children would be those with little predisposition to suffer from this allergy. While the atopic ones are the ones that have the highest risk of having any type of the aforementioned allergies.
It is precisely for this reason that the pirate bottle can be harmful to the health of the baby. Therefore, it must be administered in small amounts and used as supplements only in case of need. Like, for example, when the baby eats very little during the first days of his birth.
