OK, Great Baby Products turns out to be the SkyMall of baby gear: thousands of Innovations you had no idea you needed, that solve hundreds of problems you didn't know you had, all pitched with breathless optimism and urgency. As if all it takes to finally raise that Perfect Child is $5.95 (plus S&H, CA residents add 6% sales tax).
Just a couple of examples:
Milk Maid Baby Bottle Holder, which props a bottle on a kid's chest, "designed with an Innovative Advanced Material & Triple Laminate Technology," which the layman might call a dish sponge.
Never mind that when asked about propping up a bottle, Brazelton gives one of his rare categorical rules ("Absolutely not"*). That kid's been dressed in some kind of goofy beret, a hat which, after Monica Lewinsky, even the French have abandoned. And where are her socks?**
* "While I try never to issue categorical rules to a parent, there is one question to which I give a very firm answer. If parents ask whether to leave a baby with a propped bottle, my answer is absolutely not [italics original]. Every baby deserves to be held for a feeding. Communication at feeding time is as important as the food." Touchpoints Birth to 3, The Essential Reference for the Early Years, T. Berry Brazelton, MD, p 46.
** OK, so it's a doll. Which only strengthens my argument about the hat.
somehow, i don't think the line breaks aren't just a little convenient:
Hands-Free Baby Feeding
Recommended by Professionals
for Simultaneously Feeding Twins & Triplets
I can see how feeding multiple babies could be a problem... how do they do it? one at a time i suppose. A prop like that is tantamount to throwing a bottle in the crib and it'll eat when it gets hungry enough. stupid.
A professor of mine has said that propping bottles up for babies to drink is very dangerous. Babies haven't yet developed the muscle capacity to stop swallowing milk/formula so they can end up choking to death or damaging parts of their digestive tract. Is there anything to this prop thing that negates that problem?
Oh. You mentioned that in the next paragraph, which I neglected to read. Whoops.