Parents who are feeding on demand are advised to use a little common sense. Don't assume every cry is a cry for food. People often eat because they are bored, unhappy, or frustrated, and they are seeking comfort or enjoyment from food. Adults do it. Kids do it, too. Stop and think about when you last fed your baby. Has enough time elapsed that he should be hungry? Is it close to what you'd expect his feeding time to be? Is he demonstrating other indications of hunger, such as putting his fist in his mouth? Does he continue to cry or fuss even after you pick him up and hold him? If the answer to at least some of these questions is yes, you probably are right in giving him a bottle or your breast. But if not, look for the cause elsewhere, and if you can't find it, you may just have to hold him, rock him, soothe him, and try to calm him that way. If he's just finished a bottle an hour ago, the cause of his crying isn't very likely to be hunger.

Not only do you not want to teach your child that eating is the solution for every problem (you just might be training a future junk food junkie), but also feeding him won't even help in certain cases. If what caused him to cry wasn't hunger but boredom, feeding might make him sleepy and resolve the problem. But if it doesn't, he'll be just as bored when he finishes feeding, and he'll start crying again. The same is true if the cause of his unhappiness is a gas bubble. Feeding him might help push the gas through his system. But if it doesn't, he's going to be just as uncomfortable when he finishes feeding, and he'll start crying again. Now he has learned that feeding helps for a short time if he's uncomfortable or bored, even though it doesn't resolve the problem. He is laying the foundation for a lifetime of eating for all the wrong reasons, and you still have an unhappy baby on your hands once he's finished with the bottle or the breast.

So if you do feed your baby on demand and not by schedule, don't offer a bottle or your breast at the first cry unless it's been that long since his last feeding that he's logically due to be hungry again.