The Kassing Method: How to Bottle Feed Without Risking Your Lactation

The Kassing Method is ideal for mothers who, for whatever reason, need to leave their baby in a nursery or with a nanny. Find out more about the benefits of this method.

The Kassing Method is a method of bottle-feeding a baby without interfering with the mother’s lactation. With this method, the chances of the baby rejecting the breast or not being able to suck hard enough are almost zero.

Some mothers can’t breastfeed and have to bottle feed their baby. This often happens when the baby is premature or needs a dietary supplement. There are also women who work and, as a result, extract their breastmilk and later use it to bottle-feed their baby.On the other hand, some woman can have health problems which stop them from breastfeeding their child.

Bottle-feeding can confuse babies and stop them from accepting a breast. However, the bottle is easier for the baby as it requires less effort for them to feed. This is because the teat on a bottle is very different from a nipple. The hole is much bigger, and the milk falls under simple gravity. As a result, the baby doesn’t really need to suck.

The problem arises when the mother then returns to breastfeeding and the baby can’t adapt or has difficulty feeding. This is why a specialist in the United States, Dee Kassing, has come up with a system that uses a bottle that simulates breastfeeding.

The Kassing Method

The Kassing Method aims to reproduce the characteristics of natural breastfeeding, particularly with respect to the amount of effort for the baby.This way, the negative effects of bottle-feeding are significantly reduced and allow the mother to more easily mix-feed.

When giving the bottle, the baby should be half-sitting. You don’t need to imitate the posture for breastfeeding. The teat to use should be anatomical, which are completely different from a nipple. The hole is much bigger and helps the baby when feeding.

You just need to pick the right bottle for your baby. Then, it’s important to reproduce the natural stimulus of breastfeeding. You need to encourage baby’s reflexes by touching their cheeks and mouth so that they find the teat themselves.

When the baby has their mouth open, you need to let them suck a few times, keeping their body upright. That way, they’ll make an effort to suck the milk rather than it just falling into their mouth due to gravity.

You should controls the duration and the amount of milk your baby drinks.Furthermore, you need to stay in control by touching their cheeks and removing the bottle from time to time.

Right Conditions for the Bottle

To put the Kassing Method into practice, you need to think about the dimensions and shape of the teat. It should be totally round to simulate the shape of a nipple. It should also be long so that the tip can touch the point between the hard and soft palates, like with breastfeeding. The base should be narrow, soft, and about two centimeters (one inches) in length.

The teat should be low-flow type. This way, the milk will flow slower and the baby will have to make an effort as if they were breastfeeding. This also helps their digestion to be slower and more relaxed.

You need to buy straight teats, not curved ones. Straight ones make it harder for the milk to flow and, therefore, the baby needs to make more effort.

Feeding posture

The purpose of this method is to not overfeed the baby and at the same time be in control of how quickly they feed. When feeding, the baby should be semi-sitting.

It’s not recommended that the baby be lying down facing up, since the milk will simply fall due to gravity and they won’t have to make any effort at all to feed. Furthermore, in this position, there is a risk of choking or ear infections, as the milk could enter into the Eustachian tube in the middle ear.

The most important thing is that the bottle should be horizontal, not tilted. This way, the baby will have to suck to feed.

Before you begin, you need to trigger their reflex to seek the breast. Don’t put the bottle into their mouth straight away. Touch their lips and cheeks with the teat until they look for it and begin feeding.

Conclusion

The Kassing Method is very useful if your baby is premature, needs supplements, is being mixed-fed, or if it’s recommended by your pediatrician. It’s also ideal if the mother has injuries that make breastfeeding too painful.

If a baby requires supplements, breastfeeding specialists recommend that they be given using a bottle, as long as breast milk is used and not a formula.

This feeding method seeks to recreate the natural conditions of breastfeeding. This is mainly achieved by simulating the initial stimulation and the amount of effort required. This way, you can return to breastfeeding much sooner.