Comfort feeding
Also called comfort feed, comfort feeds, comfort fed, comfort nursing, comfort nurse, comfort sucking, feeding for comfort
Comfort feeding is when a baby feeds at the breast for soothing, closeness or sleep rather than hunger. Parents also say comfort nursing or comfort sucking, and professionals call it non-nutritive sucking.
How it's said
We have a 4.5 week old baby who constantly wants to be comfort fed and takes ages to settle.
...such a shame to cut out comfort feeds altogether!
She never, ever comfort fed and was a super efficient feeder from day one.
Who says it
Not to be confused with
- Cluster feeding is about timing: many feeds close together, often in the evening. Comfort feeding is about the reason, a baby at the breast for soothing more than milk.
- Comfort milk or comfort formula is a type of formula with partly broken down cows' milk proteins. It has nothing to do with feeding a baby for comfort.
Where it came from
Comfort feeding names the reason for a feed, not the milk. Lactation writer KellyMom files it under comfort nursing, alongside breastfeeding to sleep, and an NHS neonatal unit describes the same thing in clinical words: non-nutritive sucking, a baby sucking without getting milk, on a finger, dummy or an empty breast.
The same word also sits on formula tins: the NHS lists comfort formula as its own type.