Saturday, September 13, 2008

Bonding via bottlefeeding

I'm always really annoyed when people act like the only way for fathers, siblings and grandparents to bond with a baby is to feed him with a bottle. If you want to bond with a baby, give her a bath, change a diaper, sing the baby a song, rock him to sleep. There are so many ways to bond with a baby that don't have anything to do with feeding. Nature intends for women to feed babies, the same way nature intends for women to carry babies for 9 months. You don't see too many men fighting for the opportunity to carry the fetus and then deliver it, do you? I'm thinking if there were a serious interest in it, science would've figured out a way to make it happen by now. I guess we'll wait for that while we wait for the male birth control pill.

Anyway, my partner is always saying he wants to invent a bottle that allows dads to feed a baby that would look like a giant pair of boobs. I always laugh because isn't that seriously a punchline from that movie Meet the Fockers? But now someone has gone and done it! OK, it doesn't look like a pair of boobs, but this new "Natural Bonder Bottle" (which is being marketed as a breastfeeding system for "today's modern parent") provides hands-free feeding in a way that mimics the positioning of breastfeeding.
Would anyone actually use this? It looks sort of ridiculous, no?

I guess I could see the appeal if you're an adoptive mom and missed out on the opportunity to breastfeed, but if you're working and pumping (which is the type of mom this company seems to be targeting) why not use a regular bottle system? Are breastfed babies fooled by this contraption? Do dads and grands really feel closer to the baby? Perhaps it's more comfortable, as the site purports, to feed a baby with the system because you are hands-free and can snuggle the baby better, but I wonder if that is worth the cost. The pricing page is currently down, but I don't imagine it's cheap.
What do you guys think?

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