A pair of images have been circulating among parents on Facebook that has doctors concerned about the misinformation they're perpetuating. The photos depict a different set of baby bottles, each being called "knockout bottles," which apparently contain a mixture of baby food, infant formula, baby cereal, and, at times, Tylenol. But just as some parents are praising the bottles, many health experts are admonishing them for being dangerous and posing potential choking hazards.
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"Have you heard of a 'knockout bottle'?" one mom asked in a January Facebook post.
Apparently, the bottles are designed to "knock out" babies (aka help them drift off to sleep), and they've been shared in countless social media posts in recent months.
It all began with New York mom Alexis Delaney, who shared the original images in a since-deleted post back in November 2019, according to Metro.
"Y’all parents today!! Don’t know these knockout bottles!" she reportedly wrote at the time. "S–t worked every time. Especially when [the baby] is sick, add some Tylenol. Awww man out like the kite."
It was later shared in another Facebook post that also ended up going viral, written by a mom named Maya Elizabeth. Hundreds of people started tagging their fellow mom friends in that post too, with some suggesting they "try this" with their little one.
"I've made a few of these," admitted one mom. "I wouldn't do the Tylenol, though."
Plenty of parents were pretty appalled by the suggestion, however, and came out swinging.
"Moms please don’t do this … so many hazards," wrote one person.
"Any mother who does this to 'knock their baby out' so they sleep longer shouldn't be a mother," another person wrote. "Sleep is DEVELOPMENTAL and even as adults, a very high percentage of us don't sleep through the night for reasons other than our infants waking … It makes me SICK to my stomach to see that mother's are actually doing this to selfishly get a few extra hours of sleep."
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There are honestly a lot of reasons why the so-called 'knockout bottle' is a bad idea.
For one thing, even though the bottles are meant to be mixed with water and shaken up, baby food is meant to be given to babies as a solid food, in small increments, to prevent choking.
For another, there's a lot of scientific evidence to suggest parents may want to think twice before giving their baby rice cereal. Countless studies have proven that there's actually no nutritional value to the "food," and a 2016 study determined that babies who ate the cereal had higher levels of arsenic in their urine.
But also, tossing some Tylenol in there just so you can get some shut-eye?
… uh yeah, not exactly a good idea.
Speaking with the Sun, Charlotte Stirling-Reed, a nutrition consultant who specializes in maternal, infant, and childhood nutrition, put things matter-of-factly: "Knock-out bottles put babies at risk of choking" — end of story.
"It’s not ideal and not recommended to offer babies solid foods from bottles," she continued. "The action of drinking milk is very different to the action of swallowing solid foods, and therefore this could potentially put babies at risk of choking.
"Additionally, formula milks need to be made using very specific measurements and so it’s not ideal to alter the proportions of milk/water in a baby’s bottle," Stirling-Reed said.
