There are commercially available devices and they usually consist of a reservoir or container for milk.  The container for milk can be a syringe, a bottle clipped to the shoulder area, a bottle suspended on a cord around the mother’s neck, a plastic bag, or a bottle with a regular artificial nipple through which the tubing is threaded.  The container might have one or two thin lengths of flexible tubing.  Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for using larger or smaller tubing sizes.  Note: Tubing is usually attached by tape to the mother’s nipple or to a finger of the feeder.  Uses: To provide complimentary feeding to an infant at the breast for low milk supply, inefficient suckling, slow weight gain, adoptive nursing, relactation, preterm infant, or for neurologically affected infants.  The tubing can also be attached to a finger for others to feed the baby or to prime the baby for going to the breast.   The advantages of tube feeding devices is that it avoids the use of artificial nipples, might help improve sucking organizations patterns, enables delivery of supplements if needed while preserving the breastfeeding, and increases the flow rate at the breast which may encourage an otherwise reluctant infant to breast feed.  Some of the disadvantages is more intrusive and complex techniques to learn and to repeat many times per day (may be rejected by mothers), supplies might not be widely available, cost, infant can become dependent on the method, infant can learn to prefer faster flow rate at breast, the infant might exhibit shallow jaw excursions while sucking on an adult finger, time consuming to clean the equipment, awkward, and there is little published research on the efficacy of feeding tube devices and the manufacturers are the source of the information.

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