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This is one of those products that on first glance you think, what? Doesn’t that already exist? And if it didn’t, what took them so long? Was it a sense of propriety? Dare we dream? To test my theory, I unveiled the product at a homeschool parkday and 2 out of the 2 women, said, “huh? that doesn’t exist already?” weird.
But, here it is, in all of it’s yucky gloriousness! New Disposable Baby Bottle. yep, more to say about its humanitarian aspects in a future comic!
xox,
Heather
This Musing is related to this comic: Lot More Sense
[...] This comic is related to this musing: Disposable Bottle?! [...]
Very disturbing, indeed! I have to admit I thought it already existed.
Friends used them to supplement nursing – usually when the Mum was exhausted from not enough sleep, so Dad (and others) could join in with feeding, or else when Dad wanted to take baby out without Mum at short notice (see above about lack of sleep). They were a godsend – no sterilising, too expensive to get into a formula habit, and no need to buy other expensive equipment that they wouldn’t have used, which would also have been a waste. And they let a frazzled Mum get some sleep while Dad took a crying child for a walk in the park.
Previous ones haven’t been fully biodegradable.
Wow. Just… Wow.
i personally don’t buy the justifications for supplementing formula if your breasts work just fine. if the mother is somehow incapable of breastfeeding, i understand, but *everyone* doesn’t *need* to feed the baby. fathers can bond with their infants in their own way, but infancy is really mama’s time to shine. and we were all tired in our babies’ early months. do people just not pump anymore?
the sheer waste generated by the formula industry & now even more so with these things, makes me sad. breastfeeding doesn’t contribute to global warming, consumerism, disease or overflowing landfills. i feel the same way about disposable diapers, which is why we chose a cloth/EC combo.
just think about it this way, the disposable diapers that i wore as a baby are still in a landfill somewhere, and will not biodegrade for another thousand years. these one-off bottles will still be around for our great-great-grandchildren to clean up.
absolutely disgusting…this is just encouraging more lazy people to put in less effort to parenting…
Yes THESE are new. The others were tiny ones the hospital used to hand out. I agree I read through the article, ……..and unbuttoned my bra. There, done easy, she’s asleep again & I didn’t even have to MOVE to do it. Much LESS unwrap a bottle, lol!
Oh Heather my boys saw a Mom fixing a bottle for her baby & remarked on how LONG the baby had to cry! Not like they were in a car or something, and what IS that stuff? lol, gotta love that.
biodegradable, so it breaks down how, when? before or after the baby drinks it & just HOW do they know this. Degrades into what? Yeah I know I should finish high school first, right?
Wow, there are some pretty harsh comments on here. But did all of you read the press release? It has fantastic humanititarian potential, especially in places like Africa where children are often exposed to the virus through breastfeeding. Plus it’s biodegradable!
Wow, there are some pretty harsh comments on here. But did all of you read the press release? It has fantastic humanititarian potential, especially in places like Africa where children are often exposed to HIV through breastfeeding. Plus it’s biodegradable!
I-dra – In the case of the friends, the lack of sleep was making her quite seriously ill – she’s since been diagnosed as bipolar, and the lack of sleep was aggravating a hypomanic episode.
Dad being able to take care of baby was fairly well essential, without undermining her as a (breast-feeding, working) mama. I don’t buy the mama getting to shine. They’re equal parents, and both love their child, and it’s the child that shines with the love shown her.
These new ones are biodegradable because they are made of paper. Just like a paper milk carton they biodegrade after 18-24 months. The best part is that this company is using them to help stop the spread of AIDS in Africa due to breast feeding. Even though 25% of children orn to HIV/AIDS infected mom’s are born disease free, many will contract the disease after birth by breast feeding. Breast feeding from infected mother’s is the reason 1/3 of the children currently with AIDS in Africa contracted the disease.
Sorry, that’s 3-4 months for waxed paper milk carton to biodegrade.
good lord! this is just amazingly wasteful. it doesn’t even make sense.
maybe it was just me, but when i nursed (and nurse) at night i hardly wake up, even when they were little bitties. i would say i get better sleep when they are new then when they are 3 and need me to take them to the toilet at night, and such, or when i get a kick in the head by my 2 year old. lol but the new little baby?
heather in maine
It’s they way that they are promoted that bothers me. Down towards the bottom of the article there’s a few sentences indicating that it’s a humanitarian product so mother’s with AIDS don’t pass it through thier press milk to thier babies. There’s a heavy emphasis on STERILE, too. It can be read to mean that breast feeding isn’t sterile and more dangerous for your infant.
And yet, I’m reluctant to wave my breastfeeding banner and judge others who think they need the seeming ease of bottle feeding. I think it’s best to work on the other end of things, promoting breastfeeding by doing it, talking about it, making safer and easier for more women to do it until it becomes so much the norm that social pressure will judge bottle feeders
As a woman of African descent, I’m very aware of the AIDS crisis in Africa and the ramifications of HIV infected mothers breastfeeding their babies. I appreciate this company’s apparent attempt at a humanitarian effort. However, it’s rather insulting to promote such a wasteful product as something that is better than mother’s milk. Even if that mother is HIV positive. I remember what happened when Nestle went into underdeveloped countries touting their powdered formula as the better option for infant feeding. So many babies died. I’d believe it was more sincere if some of the profits from Western sales were going toward education and HIV treatment in Africa. What happens to these HIV negative children when their parents die from the disease? The press release said nothing of donating this product to HIV positive mothers. What makes us think that they wouldn’t go in seeking a profit from poor Africans and wealthy Americans alike?
you know what’s not biodegradable? the plastic nipple. those things will still be kicking around in a thousand years.
interesting how some people confuse “disposable” with “disappearing”. it’s “outta sight, outta mind” with most people. but how quickly we forget that our garbage GOES somewhere. and it sits there. for decades. centuries. do we really need more garbage?
As for AIDS in Africa, yes people need to be treated, but they also must be educated: condoms protect against disease, circumcision does not.
I could see this being used sensibly as an emergency product, for mothers who are living in an area with contaminated water. (Like after a flood or fire, or some really poor countries.) I’ve seen reports where mothers cannot breastfeed because they are so hungry that their bodies don’t make milk. Of course, the obvious solution THERE would be to feed the mothers and let them feed their children! So something like this could have a place… but I don’t think that place should be to let the average American put even less effort into caring for their children and the environment.
“It can be read to mean that breast feeding isn’t sterile and more dangerous for your infant.”
Well, breastmilk isn’t sterile, the whole point is that when mom’s healthy that’s a GOOD thing. There’s all kinds of great living things in there, including antibodies.
And in the context of HIV infected mothers, yes, this is fabulous. The major problem in African nations is that formula was still more dangerous than HIV infected breast milk, because yes, the baby was likely to get HIV and suffer a long, painful death, but formula was filled with contaminants from bad water and bad bottles, so they were more likely to die from formula. For HIV infected mothers in poor areas alone, this would be a godsend– a formula that is safer than breast milk.
It’s also probably good for moms who have sudden emergencies come up when they haven’t stored up a supply of frozen milk yet, and have to pump-and-dump because of anesthesia or certain medications, because you don’t have to buy a whole mess of plastic bottles and formula you’ll never use again for the two days you need to use it before it’s back to the breast.
Since it is biodegradable, it will probably be overall a good thing– not a big drain on the environment, but a boon to babies who are breastfed. Breastfeeding moms aren’t likely to say, oh, there’s this disposable bottle now, that’s so much more convenient than just using my breastmilk or the old school bottles, and all I care about is convenience (because this is still less convenient than breastfeeding!). But current formula-feeding mothers can use this for everything from being suddenly stuck in traffic and their baby has nothing to eat, to having bad town water– and it will help women who previously had to risk breastfeeding with HIV to know their child is getting safe food, even if it’s not as good as if they could get donor milk.
Ack! I was just thinking a out this the other day, and wondering when this was going to happen – or should I say dreading?!
It DID exist already! Similac made it. When I had my daughter in 2007, I remember the disposable bottles they tried to force me to give her in the hospital when she had jaundice. Well, one nurse tried making me use the bottle, but one of the other nurses was really nice and at least got me a syringe and tube to “finger feed” her instead of giving a baby who had barely gotten the latch thing down nipple confusion and ending our nursing relationship at 3 days old. Grr. But, it didn’t happen, she’s 2.5 years and still nursing!
Wiffersnapper, I agree. This would’ve been wonderful to have after Hurricane Katrina!
mirriam, there are ways dads can contribute and bond without interfering by bottlefeeding. why are you so intent on defending these disgusting products?
and yes, fine and well for aids(even though i agree with teaching about protection), but then why are they selling it to americans? why are they making this a pubicly avail product? why not just send em over there. i know why not – because they’re not actually concerned with humanitarian aid, they’re trying to make money off of a lazy disposable society.
Your comic and the commentary sparked a memory. Here goes: I remember when I was a kid (maybe around 10 or 11) my cousin was born. At the new baby visit my uncle showed me the pre filled glass bottles (maybe about 5 oz each) that the hospital gave them. He told me she only drank about half and the rest they had to throw away. My first reaction was, “that is a waste” the second, coming from a large extended family where the women did no breast feeding I remember thinking “Why not use her boobs!” Even then I thought it was ridiculous!
To add to the commentary: Why in the US to be environmental or “green” is to consume something? I am hard pressed to believe that the company has the greater good in mind, never when you are selling and pushing a product.
Thanks mama is. You always keep it interesting!
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Wiffersnapper, that’s how the level 1 & 2 NICU’s here are run, MOM does all she can (& dad too) and they bed & feed & bathe US so we can continue to take care of out babies & they save money on paying for employees. ALL the nurses are LC’s & the dept heads were VERY accommodating. The level 3 NICU, well that’s a different ball game altogether.
And the traveling tide laundromat, lol, feed us & let us wash our clothes (& diapers) WOW!
Two points in the press release really jumped out at me:
#1 that 20% of people who responded favorably to the product, said that they would use it NO MATTER WHAT BRAND OF FORMULA WAS INSIDE. we all know that formulas are not created equally & most brands vary widely from batch to batch! so, all they care about is the packaging, forget about what i’m putting into my baby’s mouth!
#2 that “one third of babies who have contracted HIV got it thru breastfeeding” which means TWO THIRDS OF THEM DID NOT CONTRACT IT THRU BREASTFEEDING. that, my friends, is called the majority.