using bottle nipple as pacifier...is it ok?

[PollyC]

Hi all

So, my baby is not that great at relaxing while drinking out of a bottle.  Unfortunately I have to work every night, so my partner has to feed him.  The baby will sometimes start to fall asleep while "nursing" from the bottle, only to wake up when it's removed from his mouth when all the milk is gone. 

I never thought sucking on an empty bottle would be ok, but then I looked at a pacifier and saw that it had a little hole in it anyway.  My question is, can the bottle nipple be used for just sucking?  Sadly, my baby won't tolerate an actual pacifier.  If I can use the nipple, should I take it off the bottle?  What I am afraid of is him sucking in air...but why does a pacifier have a hole, then?

This is becoming a horrible situation where the baby will not relax at all while I am away, because I did a bad job of training him to relax without nursing.  He will cry for three hours and there is nothing my partner can do about it.  Will post a separate question about that bit.

let me know,

thanks!

P

[new2this]

I hope someone has some advice for you. How heartbreaking to have to be in that spot. Good luck. 

Me personally I wouldn't think it would be a good idea but maybe it would work if you just gave the nipple. I really don't know. 

DD will fall asleep with a bottle and as soon as we switch she will freak out, but she will take a pacifier. 

[~Charlie's~Angel~]

Have you tried any binks that are similarly shaped and made out of the same material as the bottles he likes? 

I had thought about that back in the day, and wondered if there was a way to seal the hole in the nipple up so that they can still suck, just not get any air through the hole. 

I am unaware of any binks that have holes in them.  Other then, of course, the ones my children have chewed on. 

[SilverFish]

it really should be fine. when my dd was in the NICU after she was born, they used a preemie sized bottle nipple as a pacifier all the time. will she tolerate one nipple being removed and replaced with another one? because if you are concerned about sucking air, you can plug the hole with cotton wool and tape over the top. looks weird, but works. so when your dd is finished her bottle, just use the one nipple you've prepped to swap out with the bottle. if she won't tolerate having the nipples switched, i'd just let her have the same one. better she sucks a little air than screams for 3 hours, i think. chances are this is a pretty short phase and eventually she'll tolerate having a pacifier, or be happy to give up the bottle nipple sooner.

[P.J.]

Technically speaking, it says on (at least our) bottle nipples not to stuff cotton in them and use them as pacis. I guess with intense sucking over hours they could suck it out. I suppose the tape could help that, but I would think the weird tape chemicals could get ingested that way and I for one would not encourage my LO to suck on tape.

FWIW most pacis do not have a hole, in fact it's a trick that many a mama has employed to get a toddler off the pacifier: you pole a hole in it and it loses its appeal!

Maybe you could stuff s.thing else in there that can't get sucked through. Or just try different pacis....they make so many types. You could give it to her not only when you DH has her, but just try to pop it in there some other time to see if she can get used to it when she's not under duress.

[SeattleRain]

I don't think it's a good idea. As the baby gets older, they can choke on the nipple. I know my son at 7 months could suck up a nipple if its not attached to a bottle. I think it also seems that it could create an unhealthy relationship with bottles and food in general. I'd try some different pacifiers. The Gumdrop paci or Soothie brand paci have nipple-like nipples that require similar sucking patterns as bottles (they even have Soothie brand bottles with the same nipple if you really wanted to be consistent) and you might want to give those a try. I don't know of any pacis with holes in the nipple.

[PollyC]

oh okay...duh...you're right!  Pacifiers don't have holes...they just look like they do (there is a little dimple thing on the end of all the ones I have).  Baby used to take a Soothie but quit accepting it.  I should try to find something else, it's just so daunting.  A woman I met spent tons of money buying each and every different paci offered at the big-box baby retailer to find the one and only one her daughter would accept.  I wish I wasn't tempted to do the same thing, but at this point my mixed feelings about pacis have changed to longing for the perfect one.

Thanks for the hints!

[darcytrue]

As long as it doesn't cause the baby to get gassy then I would do whatever makes them happy. :-)  But for my kids, sucking on a nipple like that from a bottle would cause gas very easily.

[SeattleRain]

Originally Posted by PollyC 

oh okay...duh...you're right!  Pacifiers don't have holes...they just look like they do (there is a little dimple thing on the end of all the ones I have).  Baby used to take a Soothie but quit accepting it.  I should try to find something else, it's just so daunting.  A woman I met spent tons of money buying each and every different paci offered at the big-box baby retailer to find the one and only one her daughter would accept.  I wish I wasn't tempted to do the same thing, but at this point my mixed feelings about pacis have changed to longing for the perfect one.

Thanks for the hints!

My son is a pretty indescriminate paci user but in general, there are only 3 kinds of nipples. You can usually just try one of each nipple to figure out what is going to work. There's the round nipple (Soothie, Gumdrop, and I think there are some Evenflos and Nuby that use this) that are really nipple like. There's the flat style nipple that is the same either way you turn the paci (Avent, Mam) and there's the orthodontic nipple that is shaped to point up into the roof of the mouth (Playtex, NUK, Born Free, and lots others). My recommendation is just to get one style at a time and see what he likes. We really like the Avent pacis because they're easy for him to put in himself, so I'd recommend them. So if you try Avent and he doesn't like it, I wouldn't try MAM pacis because it's a really similar nipple shape, I'd go with something like the NUK which has a totally different nipple. I was lucky, my son will literally take anything into his mouth (any bottle or any paci) so this wasn't an issue for me. What kind of bottles do you use? That might make a difference? In the realm of baby equipment, pacis don't usually break the bank luckily. Stick to the brands that most people really like, which are usually the MAM, NUK, or the Soothie and then branch out from there.