Book Review: "Feed The Baby: An Inclusive Guide to Nursing, Bottle-feeding, and Everything in Between" by Victoria Facelli and Shruti Nagaraj, MD

I loved this book! I anticipate that Feed The Baby will be one of my go-to client recommendations for feeding-related questions & concerns. This book was incredibly informative while also being wonderfully relatable! The authors included personal anecdotes from their own lived experiences and stories from other women & birthing people, in addition to all of the great information they provide, keeping the book from feeling too much like a clinical resource. It certainly packs in a lot of useful knowledge!

There are illustrations throughout the book that help to both break up the text and keep things visually interesting, as well as enhance and assist the information.  Another thing I particularly appreciated was the use of QR codes in the book, which link to supplemental videos when scanned. This is something I personally have not seen utilized in books before! The videos provide such a great supplement to the text. Being able to read about a topic, like a certain position/hold for breast/chest feeding, and then scanning the code to see a video of somebody arranging themselves in that particular position. It can take a lot of the “guess work” out and can aid in troubleshooting any issues. Additionally, providing folks with the information in multiple formats (text, illustrations, videos) is very appealing, as everybody learns and take in information differently.

Another piece I appreciated about this book was how inclusive it is about normalizing all feeding options! Many infant feeding books focus primarily on breast/chest feeding and lactation, but tend to not include much on other possible options. Feed The Baby covers all aspects of infant feeding, including lots of information on pumping, bottle feeding, and formula. I feel it is important for expectant parents to understand all of the possible options in order to make the appropriate decision for their family, so to have a book available that does exactly this is fantastic!

The authors do a great job of sprinkling information about bottle feeding throughout the book, addressing the composition of formula, best practices of formula preparation & storage, troubleshooting issues such as bottle refusal, and a discussion of bottle nipples & flow preferences. Pumping and milk expression are an important part of this book as well, including information about the types of pumps available and various ways to express & store milk, as well as discussion of the logistics around pumping and returning to paid work. Another group of topics I appreciated in the book was a discussion of baby’s oral anatomy, how baby’s sucking works, and the ergonomics of feeding. Infant feeding often involved two players—the caregiver (& whatever feeding apparatus they choose) and the infant! I believe it is just as helpful to know what is going on with baby & their anatomy, as it is to know about what/how you are feeding them.

A few other sections of this book that I feel are important and deserve mentioning would be, “how different birth types can impact feeding”, addressing how varying birth scenarios can impact lactation, “first year of feeding”, a guide to feeding through a child’s first year of life that provides helpful benchmarks for each phase of infant feeding, and the chapter on special circumstances, which discusses feeding multiples, lactation after infant loss, and disaster preparedness. I truly cannot wait to share this book with clients, students, and friends.