This is not just a baby's bottle

it's a haberman bottle

Today's theme is: Bottle

Can't go anywhere today to look for an interesting bottle as I am awaiting a package delivery that should've come yesterday.

I initially thought to take a photo of the bottle of champagne that I have had since April. I got it as a gift of congratulations from some good friends of mine for graduating from uni.
But then my husband made this suggestion and off I went for a look through my son's baby box.

My son was born with Pierre Robin Syndrome and so was born with a cleft palate, just like me (darn those pesky genes!). Pierre Robin Syndrome involves a cleft palate, small and receded lower jaw and associated breathing problems. My son's cleft was a large one and he found it hard work to breathe and feed at the same time.

Two hours after he was born, he was being examined and screaming for food (lol nothing has changed there) and the midwife suddenly exclaimed 'oh he has a cleft'. That's how we were told. Good eh?

We had to try various methods of feeding him, from using a normal bottle with a bigger hole in the teat to being tube fed when he was transferred to NICU for 6 days. When we got him home we used a normal bottle with a cross cut hole in the teat but he wasn't gaining weight and was getting tired very quickly when he was feeding.
So eventually we were given a haberman feeder. We were told it would be quite tricky to master but actually it wasn't and we went great guns from there.

I kept a bottle and a valve as you can see in the picture, but I donated the teats and 2 other habermans to the hospital for other babies with clefts who might need them. These bottles and teats are expensive and not readily available in your nearest chemist.

I didn't keep any teats thinking that being made of rubber they would degrade. So here is a picture of what a haberman teat looks like.

On the teat there are 3 lines: short, medium and long which depending on which line you have lined up with your baby's mouth, determines how wide the hole of the teat will open. Trial and error gets you finding the right line to use.

You hold the teat rather than the bottle, much and such like you hold a pencil. You squeeze where the reservoir of the teat is (that big bit under the lines) milk from the bottle into the teat and then you can squeeze the milk into your baby's mouth if they can't suck themselves. It takes some work to find the right rhythm and right amount of pressure for your baby so that they get milk and aren't left with none because you're not squeezing enough or choked cause you are squeezing too hard.

We used the haberman right up until my son was off bottles, I think around 9 months when he went for his first palate repair surgery. I'm fairly sure after that he progressed to using a cup.

A haberman bottle is a far cry from what my mum had to feed me with...a teaspoon!