# Prolonged bottle-feeding 'increases obesity risk'



## purplejr (May 20, 2009)

I just wondered what others thoughts were on this. My nearly 16 month old drinks from a cup through the day (milk breakfast and tea, and water the rest of the time) but still has an 8oz bottle of milk before bed. Should we be stopping this and if so do we replace it with a cup or just drop completely?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13294632

Thanks

Joy xx

/links


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## Lorna (Apr 8, 2004)

I think it depends on the child. I had one child, who could not tolerate 3 meals per day, plus snacks. The muscle that closes off his stomach didn't work, so when his stomach got too full, he projectile vomited all his food.

What was worse his brain said I have eaten, so I don't need food, and he wouldn't eat. His stomach said he was hungry, and he wouldn't stop crying. It was H***.

So we deliberately underfed him during the day, and gave him two bottles of follow on milk during the night. One at 11.pm, and one at 3.0am. He was 14 months old, before we stopped the 3.0am feed, and 16 months before we dropped the 11.0pm

He thrived, we were a lot happier and the paediatrician left us to it. I have since discovered, that one of the common drugs to cure the terrible reflux / projectile vomiting he suffered, can cause the baby to have trouble breathing. So maybe the paediatrician was right.

As we have twins, I guess we carried on giving the other, bottles of milk.

The one who was unable to eat, is a beanpole. Yes the other one is heavy, but then he has *always* been 15% overweight for his height, ever since the "experts" have measured him. For years there was *exactly* one pound weight difference between the two twins. It was until they were about 7 that the difference began to increase.

I put that down to the fact that the school introduced "healthy" eating. Well my two had always had 5 small meals per day. One cause he still couldn't eat a big meal, so ate little and often. The other because he needs to keep his blood sugar levels up, or he falls apart. Little and often of wholemeal, carrot cake, kept him going, but that sort of food was banned by the school. They were forced to eat 3 meals per day, and the only way I could get enough calories into my two very active children, was to feed them high fat, high sugar foods. And they developed a taste for them unfortunately.

IMO the reason a child who is bottle fed, is overweight at age 5, probably has many factors, and it is simplistic to think that bottle feeding is the only cause.

Lorna


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## BikerGirl (Mar 15, 2006)

I think a lot of bad stuff is blamed on bottles that really has nothing or little to do with bottles at all. M was still having an evening bottle at 2 and I worried no end. I asked her paediatrician if I should put an end to it due to future teeth problems etc etc and he just laughed and pointed out that he himself had his evening milk out of a bottle till he was 5 and he remembers loving it. He has perfect teeth, obviously it didn't addle his brain, and he's nowhere near fat, let alone overweight!!! 
I think overweight children are the result of WHAT goes into the child, not HOW it gets in there!
X


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