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Friday, September 15, 2006

The Many Stages of Nipples Part II : The Nipple Shield

After I gave birth to my first son, I was told by a nurse that I had flat nipples. I was immediately suspicious because, now maybe this sounds a little out there, but I'm pretty sure I would have noticed that at some point in my life. It turns out the nurse and I were both right. Flat nipples are very common when women have just had c-sections because women get pumped up with fluids in preparation for the surgery. The way this is compensated for is by using a silicone device called a nipple shield.

The nipple shield works by allowing the newborn to grasp onto the silicone and thus draw the nipple (yes that would be my nipple, sounds painful huh? It's actually not.) out and into his mouth. So here's the part I found so intriguing about the nipple shield. I was only officially given ONE for my entire stay with older son (OS). That's right, you hear all about how you have to sterilize bottles and why that's one more reason to breastfeed (no bottles to sterilize so thus less work), but this nipple shield that was on my sweaty breast and then repeatly in my son's mouth could be rinsed out under warm water. The nipple shield was also responsible for a strange growth we found on OS's back under his t-shirt. My husband discovered it and said that while he wasn't positive since he wasn't a doctor, he was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be there. Plus the damn thing is clear so we constantly were losing it and finding it stuck onto things like the FLOOR, and the hospital, perhaps facing some sort of bizarre nipple shield shortage, was being really strange about giving us new ones. One of the times that the nipple shield had gone into hiding, a nurse snuck a spare one in for me as long as I promised not to tell anyone about it.

The shortage appeared to have been overcome with the birth of my younger son (YS). YS bit down on my nipple and due to this unfortunate nursing adventure there was blood in the nipple shield. I paged the nurse to ask him to come and help me with the breastfeeding. Believing based on past experience that the hospital would be more likely to fire surgeons than discard nipple shields, I immediately made gestures towards washing the nipple shield when the nurse walked into the room. He looked at me like I was crazy and said "This is disgusting! The first thing we're going to do is to throw this nipple shield in the garbage." I was relieved that the famine was over and I got a new nipple shield. Now maybe this was all the Motrin I was on from having a c-section, but I could have sworn one of the later nurses told me they lose something like a hundred thousand dollars a week on nipple shields and that the other nurse should not have given me a new one. I was flabbergasted. How could they be losing so much money when they wouldn't even give me two. Was someone stealing them from the hospital and selling them on the black market? Apparently we've discovered the reason why the cost of health insurance keeps skyrocketing.

So of course this leads to the question of "Well, if I don't have to sterilize the nipple shields even if they've been on the hospital floor, then do I have to sterilize bottle nipples?" The answer was no, they could just washed out in warm soapy water. For the record I run them through the dishwasher anyway. I do have to say that the hospital updated this in their handbook with my second son. Here's an excerpt from their bottle-feeding section:

Sterilizing Equipment
  • You do not have to sterilize the equipment used to make formula. Use your dishwasher to wash the bottles and formula-making equipment

  • If you do not have a dishwasher, wash your equipment with hot soapy water and rinse well before using

  • Make sure you have plenty of bottles, nipples and a bottle brush to clean all the bottle parts



I have no idea what formula-making equipment is. It conjures up images of a science lab with beakers, Bunsen burners and safety goggles, but I think that they are actually referring to the free disposable plastic scoop that comes with every powdered can of formula. Also for the record, I have never washed that because I've thrown it in the trash when I'm done with the can. In all seriousness though, if your child has thrush you do want to sterilize the nipples and pacifiers if you use them or use the sani-cycle of your dishwasher.

A Elliot's Lesson Learned: There's no need for industrial washing equipment; a little soap and water will wash the bottles just fine.








Which One is Most Valuable?
Picture of Nipple ShieldPicture of the Hope DiamondFree Plastic Formula Scoop
The Rare Nipple Shield The Hope DiamondFree Plastic Formula Scoop

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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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