nipple confusion
nipple confusion noun: the situation in which an infant has difficulty in switching between feeding on maternal nipples and artificial nipples (such as feeding bottles or pacifiers), often resulting in ineffective sucking or refusal to breastfeed.
Noun
nipple confusion (usually uncountable, plural nipple confusions)
- The situation in which an infant has difficulty in switching between feeding on maternal nipples and artificial nipples (such as feeding bottles or pacifiers), often resulting in ineffective sucking or refusal to breastfeed.
- The midwives and breastfeeding consultants that I saw scared me with stories of nipple confusion, so I was reluctant to try a bottle too early. This led to my baby refusing a bottle and, later, breast milk from a cup.2017 March 28, Carmen Fishwick, “'An unrealistic pressure': mothers on what it's like to breastfeed”, in The Guardian
Forms of nipple confusion
| plural | nipple confusions |
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Questions about nipple confusion
- What does nipple confusion mean?
- Nipple confusion means the situation in which an infant has difficulty in switching between feeding on maternal nipples and artificial nipples (such as feeding bottles or pacifiers), often resulting in ineffective sucking or refusal to breastfeed.
- What part of speech is nipple confusion?
- Nipple confusion is a noun.
- What is the plural of nipple confusion?
- The plural of nipple confusion is nipple confusions.
Words near nipple confusion in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nipple confusion (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-nipple confusion.wav.
Cite this entry: “nipple confusion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nipple_confusion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.