What If There Was No Formula?

[Dragonfly]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...6.191746188027&type=1&relevant_count=1&ref=nf
Came up on my news feed, hormone and steroid cows. The ones your milk comes from. I think people should be cautious if you are going to say donor milk is unsafe you dont actually know where your formula came from either. you only assume its ok and trust it. I do wish donor was trusted more, mums who donate arnt out to poison your baby.

Neither are women who choose to feed their baby's formula. Until there is a regulated, accountable affordable source of breastmilk then i guess i'll be choosing the jacked up cows.

You dont need to say neither is formula, I never said that. I hate that phase . Yet some think donor is poison to. Just wondering why some trust one and not the other.

 

[Piper84]

I strongly believe that a large of the population hasn't done any "research" on where any of their food comes from. I just clicked a few months ago that battery farms aren't just for hens, bacon comes from battery farmed pigs and that opened up a huge can of worms for me. The dairy industry in NZ is HUGE and extremely corrupt and been on the news lots at the moment.. there are big "evil" companies running it and they definitely are cutting corners, we provide quite a lot of milk I believe it is our biggest export and our formula is sold around the world. It's sad that we aren't able to blindly trust where our food comes from, any of it! Look at the horse meat thing in the UK recently.

I've fed my DD my friends "unscreened" milk when I ran out of my freezer stash and needed to go to class. The fact that is willing to feed it to her own baby was enough for me. I would gladly donate milk to anyone in my community and have donated my unscreened milk to many people. I'm not saying everyone has to accept unscreened milk at all, I wouldn't object to it being screened prior to use but I have had my blood screened by donors.

The horsemeat scandal has affected the whole of Europe, and I read another article about South African "beef" being tested by a university team and shown to contain donkey, goat and undeclared pork. Not to mention the free range organic egg fraud happening which was discovered in Germany recently

 

[Guppy051708]

Seriously?
How would women cope? What would doctors suggest? How would you deal with low supply??

Interesting thought.

Well considering I cannot, nor will i ever, be able to EBF due to Insufficient Glandular Tissue, guess I would be at the mercy of other nursing mothers. Otherwise, im quite certain my child would die....and this fact is the biggest heartache ever in suffering from IGT.

I BFed both of my boys and i will BF this child as well. With my first, special formula SAVED HIS LIFE. I could only produce 4oz at my max while being on herbs, constant nursing, domperidone, drinking this, eating that, pumping around the clock. Doing everything imaginable. I did not know about human donor milk at that point (well actually i did but i didn't know my child could get it since he wasnt terminally ill or a premie). I nursed him and supplemented with formula for the first 5 months. Which to me is amazing given my struggle.

With DS2 I nursed but still had to suppl. almost as much, but i had about 20 different human milk donors and bc of them and my efforts, my child lived on breastmilk for the entire first year of his life. I have a donor set up for DD too and as well i will BF and surpass my last achievement of 12 months. Hoping to go into toddler yrs should DD permit.

On top of this, my boys do not tollerate dairy. So cow milk wouldn't be an option even if it less than ideal. They get so sick from dairy, it wouldn't be feesable. I suppose if i were lucky enough to have a goat that would be okay-sure beats starving! but not as likely an option. (Heck i struggled to find it for DS1 after he turned 1). There are laws here that make the selling of goat milk for human consumption illegal (crazy, eh!?) but some farmers will do it under the table...i couldnt find one though. And out of all of the stores around here there was only ONE store that carried goat milk.

A wet nurse, im sure would not be affordable-so i would have to go the donor milk route, unless there was some1 kind enough to nurse child for free (fat chance!) With that said, donor milk is not always an option. Donors are far and few between. It takes HOURS of searching and finding one that is a good fit. And sometimes an option to have a donor is nonexistant. Not to mention, if i didn't have the internet, i NEVER EVER would have been able to find a milk donor! Imagine that! Ive had to travel 3,4, and in one case 6 hours -HOURS- to obtain human milk! Not all of us live in big cities! And getting milk from a milk bank isn't really viable either, at least for ladies in my position who birth full term healthy babies but simply cannot make milk bc of a congenital defect. I can get an Rx for milk from a milk bank for ONLY the first 3 months of my babies life. Plus it is about $7 per OUNCE on top of that...so not only is not allowed after three months, i wouldnt ever be able to afford it!

 

[Scottish mum]

I thought this when a girl I know said she would not breastfeed because it is too weird.

I guess babies starved to death.
I have a low supply and I've cried imagining mine starving.

Hello women in third world countries manage! Most can't bf due to famine so the babies eat rice.

 

[Tasha]

Hello women in third world countries manage! Most can't bf due to famine so the babies eat rice.

Where did you get the most cant BF from? And that they eat rice?

Surely if they can afford to feed the baby on rice then the mum would it and therefore be able to BF, killing two birds with one stone.

 

[Piggywinkle]

Any man with fuller lips and longer eyelashes than me is a no-go I'm afraid

That's why I miss Sean Bean!

 

[Piggywinkle]

Any man with fuller lips and longer eyelashes than me is a no-go I'm afraid

That's why I miss Sean Bean!

 

[Guppy051708]

...I'm so confused lol

 

[Piper84]

Any man with fuller lips and longer eyelashes than me is a no-go I'm afraid

That's why I miss Sean Bean!

Lol looks like a Game of Thrones crossover post

 

[Noelle610]

I grieved the loss of breast feeding deeply, so I only now have the courage to look in this thread.

My baby had difficulty latching. Severe jaundice, weight loss (we're talking nearly 20%) and a traumatic birth on top of it. I saw 4 (yes, you read that right) lactation consultants. All were lovely and none could help. I exclusively pumped for six months. Woke up before dawn, pump. Go to work for ten hours, pump. Come home, pump. Put baby to bed, pump. Middle of the night, pump. I lost precious time with my child. I lost tons of sleep. Every time I heard the pump I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I firmly believe it contributed to my PND.

If I could go back? Formula all the way.

How would a wet nurse have helped?

Has anyone bothered to mention infant mortality rates before formula existed?

 

[Noelle610]

Oh and could I have breastfed eventually had I "tried harder"? Probably. Im llikely not one of the 1%. But I was fucking depressed, tired and didn't want to drive an hour to see the 5th lactation consultant. So sue me.

 

[Piper84]

How would a wet nurse have helped?

Has anyone bothered to mention infant mortality rates before formula existed?

A wet nurse would have fed your child.

Infant mortality rates weren't higher because of a lack of formula, but almost completely down to childhood diseases with no vaccinations, antibiotics or penicillin, unhygienic living conditions and other socioeconomic factors.

 

[Tasha]

Any man with fuller lips and longer eyelashes than me is a no-go I'm afraid

That's why I miss Sean Bean!

Hahaha. Love this reply.

 

[Noelle610]

How would a wet nurse have helped?

Has anyone bothered to mention infant mortality rates before formula existed?

A wet nurse would have fed your child.

Infant mortality rates weren't higher because of a lack of formula, but almost completely down to childhood diseases with no vaccinations, antibiotics or penicillin, unhygienic living conditions and other socioeconomic factors.

If she was too jaundiced/lethargic to latch on?

I don't doubt there were many contributing factors to the infant mortality rates during midieval times, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that medical assistance like formula could have been an issue. I just don't think a world without formula would be idyllic in the way it's being made out to be.

 

[Piper84]

How would a wet nurse have helped?

Has anyone bothered to mention infant mortality rates before formula existed?

A wet nurse would have fed your child.

Infant mortality rates weren't higher because of a lack of formula, but almost completely down to childhood diseases with no vaccinations, antibiotics or penicillin, unhygienic living conditions and other socioeconomic factors.

If she was too jaundiced/lethargic to latch on?

I don't doubt there were many contributing factors to the infant mortality rates during midieval times, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that medical assistance like formula could have been an issue. I just don't think a world without formula would be idyllic in the way it's being made out to be.

Wet nurses were usually "professionals" who'd been offering their services for decades and were probably able to express milk into cups.

It's horrible to think what could have happened to our LOs had we lived in earlier times and I have done the same thinking about my LO's birth and what would have all gone wrong. It's crazy thinking, but it's there.

I think you're right that formula should be seen as medical assistance, and I think the way formula companies target profits needs to be looked at seriously as it is amoral in a lot of cases.

 

[Piggywinkle]

Any man with fuller lips and longer eyelashes than me is a no-go I'm afraid

That's why I miss Sean Bean!

Lol looks like a Game of Thrones crossover post

I have NO idea how that happened!

 

[meli1981]

at least it lightens things up! lol

 

[Piggywinkle]

Glad to be of service! *bows*

 

[meli1981]

lol

 

[Kage76]

How would a wet nurse have helped?

Has anyone bothered to mention infant mortality rates before formula existed?

A wet nurse would have fed your child.

Infant mortality rates weren't higher because of a lack of formula, but almost completely down to childhood diseases with no vaccinations, antibiotics or penicillin, unhygienic living conditions and other socioeconomic factors.

If there was one available. Or if you were wealthy enough to afford one. If there wasn't you made do- you fed your baby milk from another species or you fed them pap- a mix of flour and water or bread and water and you dealt with a child that was "sickly" and probably would not make it to 5 years of age. To say that nutrition has no part in childhood health is a bit short-sighted, if nutrition has no part in childhood mortality then breastfeeding would not have made a difference either.

Mortality rates were higher because of all the things you mentioned. But they were certainly higher because there was not a suitable, readily available alternate. Formula is a life saver. That's why it was invented, to save babies lives. The whole "formula companies are bad because they are all about profits" irritates me- i don't see the same vitriol toward medela, they are out for profits with their pumps and their supplementary feeding systems, and the manufactors of nipples pads and creams and boppy pillows are out to make a buck out of breastfeeding just as much as the formula manufacturers. We live in capitalist system. Everything we buy benefits a company and profits. Just because one is warm and fuzzy and the other stigmatised doesn't made the end result any different.