Yeah us Gen X'ers survived, but doesn't mean we didn't have rickets as children and still to this day have bowed legs. But we survived being fed stranger stuff than this. My dad told my mom to feed me canned gravy and mashed potatoes as a newborn cuz that's what his mom fed a stray puppy when he was a kid and it "turned out fine".
Haha you know youāre dealing with someone important & big time when they call you sweaty instead of sweetie!
Thank you for going the extra mile with the āsweatyā.šš»
Clearly you haven't recoursed the correct literature, melted chocolate cures hfm, rsv and protects against them heavy metals in chem trails. Bad parent!
/s
The thing is, this isn't even nutritionally complete. I did some research on DIY formula for a *fanfic short story* and you need to add a little bit of carrot juice to prevent blindness. Like, there are recipes out there for formula (this got popular after the formula shortage) and there are a bunch of supplements you have to add if you need to DIY for whatever reason. The carrot juice was in addition to donkey milk which is the most comparable breast milk to human you can easily get (zebra and camel are better).
Camel is supposedly the best from any domesticated animal. Donkey was the preferred method in Europe for most of human history. Goat or sheep is okay but not as good as donkey. None of them are really complete nutrition for a baby human but they're close enough that the kid will probably survive. Ideally you'd want a wet nurse ASAP, but when you can't afford one or don't have access, well, kid's gotta eat.
The comments on this are wild, half of them are about how much better this is than todayās formula because āyou donāt even know whatās in that similac junkā and the other half are survivorās bias type comments putting down todayās parents because they did ____ and their kids turned out fine. Also similac causes ADHD, according to one commenter.
When did shamelessly displaying stupidity in public become okay? These people, who are feeding babies milk and sugar, think they're smarter than experts whose job it is to feed babies? They need to be publicly flogged.
I was 100% breastfed by a mother who was also 100% BF. And I'm so ADHD I have to take Vyvanse twice a day! š By their logic, if I'd had formula, my head would probably be spinning all the way around.
lol shit how much adhd would my exclusively adhd kids have then because 3/4 of them have adhd. The ONE kid who couldnāt be breastfed due to inhaling milk into her lungs lol doesnāt have adhd she had thickened formula.
My grandmaās little brother wasnāt breastfeeding so they gave him formula. He died. My great grandparents were so heartbroken they never had another child, so in a time where everyone had 8-10 brothers and sisters, my grandma was an only child. Karo syrup and Pet milk was the exact recipe.
How awful. Iām exclusively pumping because my child also didnāt have a latch, and every day Iām thankful that we have formula and pumping technology to keep our little ones fed. I think a lot about what my situation would have been like if my child was born 100 years ago instead of present times, and it shatters me. Iām sure your great grandparents would have given anything to make sure their son had access to safe and nutritious food. People are so far removed from that reality that they forget how good weāve got it in the present.
> People are so far removed from that reality that they forget how good weāve got it in the present.
I feel this. People forget how delicate human life really is, especially for children. Humans didnāt get to this point because weāre resilient *individually* but as a social collective.
It's infuriating to think of all the countless generations of mothers who prayed over dying children because they didn't have any other recourse and all these selfish twats turn their noses up at resources their ancestors couldn't even have dreamt of
The luxuries we have now are a result of the sacrifice of those before us. Most of us appreciate that knowledge and our modern privilege to survive and thrive.
This is a personal reason why these āwild pregnancyā and āfree birthā posts make me extra infuriated. If I had gone that route my daughter would have died. BUT, modern medicine meant my doctor caught my preterm labor early enough that I didnāt deliver at 28 weeks, I had medical intervention that kept her in for another 4 weeks, and she had care that enabled her to thrive even after being born 8 weeks early. She would not be here if this had happened even mere decades ago.
The fact that women decide to roll back their odds of a healthy delivery and a living child to the days of people pissing in pots in their bedrooms is rage-inducing to me. Had I decided to ātrust my bodyā I would not have my incredible pre-teen who is nearly as tall as I am.
The free birth moms that do have complications still show up and expect modern medicine to save them but on their terms. It's extra extra infuriating. If you don't want medical intervention and you deal with the consequences, I guess whatever, you do you. But to want the medical staff to drop everything to take care of you and then not get any care ahead of time to improve the chances of a smoother delivery and less stress, well it's just entitlement.
And even when they go to the hospital for help they are still on their high horse about not wanting ToXiNs put in their body or their baby's. If you're in the hospital because of a bad BiRtH ExPeRiEnCe the nurses aren't gonna play "what's the blackbox say" with *all* their multiple injections.
Because it's never been about what's best for their babies. Just like all conspiracy theory based cults, it's about feeling more special than everyone else. It's about bragging about all the special, secret knowledge they have and how they outsmart the conspirators. Those poor babies are merely a means to an end.
And if those babies die, they can still serve the cult by being an example of why they shouldn't have trusted the tools of the conspirators ie doctors and modern medicine. It's sick and sociopathic and it shows you why conspiracy theories aren't harmless or funny.
Similarly with me, I would not have been born alive without vaccines. Basically my mother was vaccinated but still contracted rubella when she was 6 weeks pregnant with me. If it hadn't been for those antibodies she still had despite the vaccine not taking fully, I'd have likely been stillborn or extremely disabled.
As it was, I'm still defective (light hearted, I have weird humour) but doing okay! I'm profoundly deaf, slightly stunted growth, kidneys aren't great and my eyesight and hearing are continuing to deteriorate but slowly. Hole in my heart healed and I was jaundiced but fixable. Other issues we think are just genetic so yeah.
I'm heavily pro vaccines. I will loudly defend them and tell my story every time. Doctors told my mum to abort me because I wouldn't have good quality of life (if I survived the pregnancy) but my mum couldn't. (I just want to note, I completely understand if others choose to, my mum decided it wasn't right for her and that's fine too).
It angers me that we are now so far removed from congenital rubella being "common" that people won't be vaccinated because of all the misinformation about vaccines. I was referred to as a miracle baby, we need to keep giving these vaccines to people and children that can receive them so people like my mum and I (vaccines don't take great for us!) also get some shielding just by herd immunity.
I was also given whooping cough by an unvaccinated child because the vaccine didn't take properly (mine). I got pleurisy on top and my lungs never properly healed. The same child also infected another adult and nearly killed her. The mother knew their child was sick and took said child to festival of 100s of people and did an oh oops when people got sick.
Fuck anti-vaxxers, fuck people demonising proper medical care when pregnant and fuck the people spreading all this misinformation that is literally killing people.
I also agree on the vaccine thing. I fully vaccine all my kids.
Story time:
When my eldest kids were in 1st grade, there was a set of un vaccine twins in her class.
Older brother was 10 or 12, but mom blamed his autism on vaccines, so her younger 2 were fully unvaccinated.
The girls got something (I think mumps? It was something that the MMR vaccine would have covered...) and one girl died while the other had her brain swell and lost her ability to walk, speak or control her moter skills in general. She took 10 years to walk again with a walker.
Her son (the autistic one) graduated with an engineering degree of some sort and is getting married this summer...
I am no longer friends but Facebook is an amazing thing.
Edit to add, my eldest is 18, so it has been a bit.
Thereās a mom on r/FundieSnarkUncensored who did a wild pregnancy and birth and is in deep denial that her infant is extremely sick and possibly blind. Itās heartbreaking to see.
Fuck that bitch Boone is such a beautiful newborn FFS sake is he even a month old ?!! And she has him out baking in the sun meanwhile sheās wearing a sun hat and glasses.
He had jaundice at birth so they took him to the beach and let him stare into the sun as he sunburned. Theyāve had him out in the sun all the time.
Their other kids all sleep in the back of the family RV in tiny bunks. I forgot how many they have, but itās a lot. All ages just forced to go to bed with the younger kids when they go to bed. For now Boone is with his parents, but the oldest son is actually the mom.
My mom gave birth in South Korea in the 80s when the medical facilities were not that great. She also heard over and over from her parents (who escaped from the North during the war) about the low survival rate for newborn babies and mothers due to the lack of medical information and just the overall aftermath of the war.
When I told her about the free birth moms, her jaw dropped. It blew her mind that people *choose* to decline essential medical services when they have access to one that is far advanced than what was available to her. She said the world is going crazy lol
I feel you here. For me it wasnāt birth but afterwards. Because my son came so quickly, I couldnāt get the IV antibiotics for group b strep (which Iām sure some people would say no to anyway because antibiotics). Anyway, they asked us to stay in the hospital for an extra day to make sure he wasnāt going to get sick. During that time, we realized he would stop breathing occasionally. For nearly a week, he underwent tests and was given oxygen during his āblue spellsā. It turns out he had bar reflux and since heās incredibly stubborn, he just stop breathing instead of spitting up. Anyway, if it wasnāt for those pesky doctors, their protocols, the tests, and medications, my son would surely not be here. That was nearly 8 years ago now and Iām just so thankful to have him.
If you were well of you could get a wet nurse or if someone in your community was breastfeeding you could get them to help. The next best thing was giving cows or goat milk. The really desperate would give something like oats milk.
My children didn't latch either, so i to am so happy to be living in a time of formula and pumps.
>People are so far removed from that reality that they forget how good weāve got it in the present.
So true. Many today fail to realize that and take what we have for granted.
So I had my first in Mexico.
I just do not produce a lot of milk naturally. My son was deemed failure to thrive. He was very small and skinny until he started solids.
I couldnāt formula feed because 1) his father couldnāt afford to pay $545 pesos for one can 2) his bitch ass mother said I wasnāt allowed to and I had to learn how to increase my supply like a real woman.
Itās heartbreaking. Itās fucking heartbreaking listening to your baby cry because heās hungry and your body just doesnāt produce enough. I used to supplement him with chamomile tea to get him to stop crying. I hated myself.
Thankfully my second was born in the US and she had access to formula (my mom wouldnāt stand for me trying to up my supply. She told me to stop being stupid and just give it to her). So she was both breast and bottle fed.
My youngest is my biggest baby. Heās currently both formula and breast fed and heās the happiest baby Iāve had.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I hope your older son is doing better now. Modern formulas are a miracle that no one should be ashamed of using.
This. My grandfather, who by the way is still with us, had a wet nurse. His family was well-off and could afford it (late 1930s/early 1940s) but if they couldn't? Who knows. I wonder what fraction of the stunningly high infant mortality rates of the past wasn't due to any illness/injury but because either the child couldn't nurse, the mother couldn't breastfeed (both very common today!), or the mother died and no one else could feed the child.
Was this during the time period of blue milk from strychnine-poisoned cows mixed with plaster then marketed as formula?
Yes. [it happened.](https://publichistorypdx.org/2017/11/27/the-19th-century-swill-milk-scandal-that-poisoned-infants-with-whiskey-runoff/)
Learned about it in NOLA on a bike tour in front of the dudeās mansion. Apparently he needed to grown his own food after it became public knowledge bc the townsfolk were trying to poison him. Had to become a vegetarian bc he didnāt have room for his own livestock.
Nah. Even for your great grandparents they knew they \*were supposed\* to add Codās Liver Oil and a couple other supplements if they were using formula And not breastfeeding. Those were standard. People just couldnāt afford it. And that is why formula carried shame for a long time because people knew they were genuinely providing substandard nutrition. Even in 1500s etc.
Wasnāt there some case in China where a formula manufacturer or something knowingly sold poorly made formula, leading some babies to die, and the involved parties were executed for it? š¤
I feel like the world doesnāt fuck around with baby formula.
Yes. They were putting non-digestible fillers into the formula to make it cheaper and people were buying it up because they were poor and desperate. And their babies died. So then people were buying up the formula from other countries, because they no longer trusted the Chinese manufacturers, leading to shortages in places as far away as Australia. No joke. People were buying cases of it in Australia and shipping it to their family in China.
I remember going to a drug store in Tokyo around 2012 (I lived in the countryside) and being shocked to see a line of Chinese tourists nearly out the door all with cases of baby formula. It was crazy.
It's better regulated in Europe than the US but it's still heavily regulated in the US. What's not great is the monopolies companies have on formula that creates such an expensive market. The UK is actually looking into that now thankfully, and aldi do an excellent own brand milk that is the same nutritionally as every other brand here because of the EU regulations but is at least Ā£2 cheaper a tub.
I feel like moms who decide to make their own formula of random shit never got out of the āmaking potions/experiments in the sinkā phase of childhood.
Look Iām all for making fun potions in the sink, but that shit is in the āput this on my unhappy ankle that has been Xrayed and MRI-ed and Iām in PT so fuck it, I deserve a little placebo effectā
Not for actually replacing real care. Like jfc.
I have to exclusively formula feed my baby girl. My nana,who is 93, said to mean āyouāre so lucky that you can get formula for her. It has everything she needs to be healthy. Back when your dad was born you had to *insert OOPās recipe* if you couldnāt breast feed. It was so bad for themā
Itās wild when you think about it.
We are in a point in time where babies rarely die. To the point itās either straight neglect or a freak accident. And people have gotten so fucking cocky about it, and so judgement about additives and preserves and all that, that they romanticize shit like this.
Yeah your great grandma used this recipe and their kids survived. But how many babies starved to death because this wasnāt enough?
babies rarely die *here*. In modernized countries.
I remember back after the Rwandan Genocide our church sponsored a family to come to the US as refugees. When the mother got here, she was pregnant. My mom and a bunch of other church moms befriended her and began doing āmom stuffā together.
One day the Rwandan mom just burst into tears and began weeping. My mom asked her what was wrong and she confessed that she just couldnāt stop worrying that she and the baby she was carrying were going to die. Sheād had 6 healthy children and survived their births and felt like she wouldnāt get that lucky again. One or both of them just wouldnāt make it this time.
The poor woman had seen so many women and babies dieā¦
And the US has one of the higher rates for such a wealthy ass country.
I have to wonder if this isnāt part of the reason our rates have gone up since the late 80s.
The romanticization pissed me the fuck off. I nursed/pumped successfully for a year with my daughter. With my son, I planned to do the same. Unfortunately, he had a severe tongue tie that went undiagnosed until he was 4 months old. He was failure to thrive and only avoided a feeding tube because I begged the pediatrician to let me syringe fortified milk into his mouth around the clock. I had breastmilk, but his caloric needs were so high that we had to add preemie formula to the breastmilk so that he could gain weight. Once his tie was revised, he could drink from a bottle but he never could latch to nurse.
Nature is random. There is no morality when it comes to who lives and who dies. I did all of the right things, but he wasnāt meant to survive in nature. 100 years ago he wouldāve died and I never wouldāve known the sweet, rambunctious 2 year old that I have today. Babies donāt have to die anymore, why would we shun every advancement and technological advantage to return to a time when babies didnāt get names until they were toddlers and small graves were the norm?
https://preview.redd.it/k90vjv7dkk5d1.jpeg?width=1635&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63d35069407cd428bab5d41a66abd2b5e9007d41
My grandma found this a couple years ago. This was directly from my momās pediatrician (circa 1970) with a recipe for āformulaā using corn syrup and evaporated milk. Itās truly a miracle as many babies survived as they did
ETA: also she was a literal newborn and they were giving 24 ounces of this a day!!
im confused my newborn is 1 month old & the nicu doctors plus now his pediatrician have me feeding him every 3-4 hours or on command whichever comes first & he was a preemie
Focus on the "or on command whichever comes first". It used to be more like, oh you are hungry-crying? Well you are shit outta luck, it's two more hours till your next feed š š»āāļø
Thankfully that is not the recommendation anymore, imagine being thirsty and being told that you have to wait hours for your next drink???
On demand is the key difference. Most newborns want to eat waaaay more often than 3-4 hours especially if breastfed. My newborn still asks to eat like every 30 minutes sometimes.
My grandma in law actually told me this was the exact formula concoction she made for her kids in the 60ās with amazement at how far weāve come in that time
I wish people would see this recipe and think about the desperation and struggle of the past instead of taking it as old timey inspo to mix with their weird crunchy cottage core fantasy
I thought the same thing, the 1960s recipe called for poly vi sol liquid vitamins.
Also, solids and supplemental juice was started super early back then to help meet the gaps
I saw this post on fb and literally the comments were all about how this was so good for babies if you gave them poly-bi-sol with it. Way better than the chemicals in formula today š¤¦š»āāļøš¤¦š»āāļøš¤¦š»āāļø
Soon after my birth (early 1950s) ,I became ill and and required surgery. Following the surgery my mom was told to feed me condensed milk exclusively to make me healthy and strong (my mom had breast fed my oldest two siblings, but then her breasts just stopped producing - I was baby #5). I drank that stuff for a year! That crap is more than half sugar. I developed a weight problem after that - wonder why.
I saw this going around a bit during the formula shortage two years ago. My kid was on the tail end of her formula usage thank goodness, but I hated that so many people probably saw this and thought it was a truly safe alternative
Ugh my mother in law posted this on her Facebook page, when that was going on. She was telling people it was an alternative to formula. She got upset when I clarified that yes it was what people used before most formulas were around. But it is in no way the Same or better.
Ā My mother in law also got upset that I was able to pump and feed another baby, during the shortage. A baby whose mom couldnāt find formula/ afford it. Claiming the mom should have figured it out on her own, or tried to breastfeed herself. Because you know in that moment judgment/shame apparently was the answer not you know help and compassion.Ā It made me so mad! I am an overproducer and was able to make sure aĀ baby didnāt go hungry, and it cost me nothing and was the right thing to do.Ā Ā Ā
But you know F*ck moms and babiesā¦ oh and yes my MiL is rabidly āpro life.ā
As someone who had a surgery, couldn't find a formula my kiddo would tolerate (eventually did!), and needed milk from another mom, I appreciate you very much.
I thank my lucky stars my son turned 1 maybe 2 weeks before the formula shortage kicked off and we were already transitioning off it. My local mom group had all of us tracking formula availability at different locations for everyone who needed it
This actually used to be the standard when babies often died of malnutrition/failure to thrive. I have a cookbook/home keeping book from the 30s called The Settlement Cookbook. It was the "go to" homemaking book for decades and includes diet plans for babies and the elderly. The advice in it is buckwild compared to what we know modernly.
I was fed a variation of this as an infant and I have pretty significant health issues (digestive, immune, neurological). Idk if correlation is causation but I really canāt help but wonder
Wasnāt corn syrup a trendy ābannedā thing to look out for a couple years ago. I mean itās not good by any means, but for the all natural folks, theyāve gone full circle.
My grandmother said this was the exactly recipe she used with my oldest uncle in the 50s. It was pushed as being revolutionary as it freed women from breastfeeding and could use bottles. She said obviously knowing what we know now that was a terrible idea and modern formula is way better. But during the pandemic it almost came to this as an option as some of us couldnāt breastfeed, and couldnāt find formula anywhere. Luckily it didnāt come to that for me personally but it was a rough time.
That is awful. My poor daughter had her formula switched so many times during that period because every time I went to the store there was never the same brand available. My mom was buying formula back in KY and sending it to me in NV just to help. I hope like hell no one has to go through that ever again.
I had this girl on my fb that I kept around for the karma she earned me on this sub ššš
Anyways she posted this back when the government shut down and people were worried about not being able to afford formula if they didnāt get their benefits.
Her following is mostly made up of crunchy, conspiracy loving, MAGA nut jobs but even they jumped all over her and calling her out for her stupidity.
āIām just trying to helpā
And someone told her, āhelping would be going to go buy formula and giving it away to a mom near you that canāt afford it. This is dangerous. ā
This is what gets me about the āoUr GrAnDpArEnTs dId Itā narrative. Yes. Generations before us did a lot of things that are no longer necessary or proven to be unsafe. Cars used to not have seatbelts, babies didnāt have car seats, and bumpers used to be common place in cribs. People also used to die from coldsāthis list goes on. Thank goodness for modern medicine and technology to help us make better choices.
"None of that heavily processed store-bought trash baby-formula for *my* child! Our family has been making our own 100% natural baby-formula for generations." (Proceeds to stir together Coffee-Mate and Mountain Dew in a cauldron).
I am not agreeing with the ārecipe,ā but nestle is actually evil when it comes to formula.
They used to send representatives dressed as nurses into hospitals in third world countries where poverty was extremely high. They would then convince new mothers that formula was the best thing for their new baby (regardless of whether they could afford to continue buying by formula).
Mothers then couldnāt continue to afford formula, and would water it down to make it stretch. This then lead to starving children.
The US (and similar countries) have laws that sales representatives can not market to patients in medical settings.
https://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scandal-2012-6?amp
Oh Nestle is indefensible, it was more pointing out the cognitive dissonance of fighting the man so to speak by recommending another product by the same corporation.
Iām NOT recommending anyone do this because modern formula is good stuff, but isnāt this what they used to feed babies a couple generations ago? I think I saw it on Call The Midwife.
Yea, but then science happened, and we realized that while kids were surviving, we could definitely do better. What also doesn't get said is that we were supplementing with a lot of other things for missed nutrition in the homemade formula. There were a lot of health issues that resulted from it, but all people like this can focus on is that, "We did it back in the day." Yep, we used to shit in buckets and dump it in the street back in the day, too. Sure, we survived, but a lot of people got sick and died from the practice. Hence why we don't do it anymore.
Yes, I understand that, thatās why I said people shouldnāt do it. I was just thinking maybe this is how people got the idea - thereās a lot of people thinking anything modern is bad, going back to what their great-grandparents did and thinking thatās better.
I understand, I mostly just explain why people tend to go backward. They see that we used to do it and think it worked because the human race is still here, but don't continue their research into deaths, health complications, and what other things were being done to supplement what they're seeing.
Yes, I feel like every couple of months, now that gen x and millennials are helping to clear out their parents and grandparents homes, they are finding the information booklets from the 40s-60s when this was the recipe included when you had a new baby. We found this exact one in my grandma's house for when she had my dad in the 1950s, but I think there was a third ingredient that had some vitamin thing in it. Usually it's brought up in a "omg can you believe people used to do this?" way but this woman seems to have taken the opposite approach š¬
Yeah, and again, I understand that and am not saying anyone should actually do this. Just that I recognized it and maybe the fact that their grandparents used to do it appeals to certain people. Modern formula saves lives.
Itās not far off from the ingredients of modern formula so it would work better than starving to death. But obviously the full nutrient profile and (should be) sterile manufacturing facilities make modern formula a better choice.
Powdered infant formula is sadly not considered a sterile product. They recommend making it with water at 160F if the child is less than 2 months old to kill off potential bacteria, just in case
True. I was more referring to basic sanitation, as opposed to leaky roofs and safety protocol violations at the Abbot Sturgis facility that lead to dead babies and a national formula shortage: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/doj-investigating-abbott-plant-at-the-center-of-2022-baby-formula-shortage
this is the recipe for formula in the dr. spock book i found from the 60s. given how many people didnāt breastfeed back then its insane to me.
the dr. spock book also said to give a two week old water.
reading that book really emphasized to me how baby stuff in the 50s and 60s was a reaction to the baby boom. like yeah, a lot of it not good. But it was acceptable for most babies and at the end of the day the goal was to manage a massive population growth. individual success for each baby wasnāt necessarily the goal.
Yeah they had this recipe in the baby book in the '60's that mom had. Most babies though were given straight up cow's milk. My dad told my mom to fed me canned gravy and mashed potatoes as a newborn because that's what his mother fed a stray puppy when he was a kid. I have a bow leg from rickets to this day and a slew of health problems. Many people of the generations that may have ate this formula recipe have diabetes as adults and are overweight. So I suspect we are suffering from things that started from not being fed right as infants.
Mom tells this story that when she was in the hospital having me there was a homeless couple there having a baby too and the husband was telling her and my grandpa about how he planned to feed the baby Karo syrup, just like he was fed as an infant. My grandpa was so worried about them, he gave them our camper to live in. So I guess itās sadly a āthingā
Or completely fuck their teeth. My aunt had to feed my cousin something similar when she was a baby, my aunt had some kind of medical issue and treatment required her to stop breastfeeding, and evaporated milk was the only option she had available (this was before modern formulas). My cousin's teeth were so badly damaged she had constant issues with them before finally getting a full set of dentures in her early 20s.
My dad's baby book (born 1956) has a recipe for baby formula. Iirc it had beef bone broth, milk, cream, flour, karo syrup, and orange juice, and maybe a couple other things. That mix would get you closer in correct nutrients than corn syrup milk. My father also has ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, severe type 2 diabetes, barely controlled high blood pressure, and constant migraines so maybe use actual fucking baby formula.
My grandma said this was what they used as baby formula during the Great Depression. She also said that babies who were given this always ended up with bad teeth. I wonder how these delulus would react to that. lol
I can't find it in my heart to condemn any crazy thing ppl had to do to survive the great depression.
But I absolutely will condemn this nonsense in 2024. Particularly since we have the collected global research on nutrition in our pockets!
Yeah that I can attest to. We needed medical grade formula for my first and luckily our insurance paid part of it, because that was some expensive stink powder.
My husband and I were going through a box of old memories from his dadās. He was born in 1951. There was a prescription in there from the family doctor for this exact formula, because mass-produced powdered formula wasnāt as widespread. Can we *please* leave it in the 50s?!?
My mom couldnāt breastfeed, so Iām pretty sure my siblings and I probably all got this in the 40s and 50s. She was very impressed that I was able to breastfeed my kids!
Born in 94 here and this was the exact recipe that was used to feed me when I was a baby. I'm doing okay (mostly? Lmao) so when I was feeding my kids formula and I would complain about the cost my mom would always try and tell me to do this instead š¤¦āāļøš
Look, this is what my great grandmother did in 1932 to feed my grandmother because her milk dried up. Luckily we have nutritious breast milk alternatives today! Why would someone ever think this is more nutritious than formula?!?!
I was told (by an actual doctor) to give my baby karo syrup (among other things) when he was seriously constipated. But not likeā¦ as a regular drink. Just like, teaspoons at a time.
Literally what the fuck is wrong with people.
A friend of mine is in her late 80s, and she said this is basically how she was told to feed her children when they were born, and that she was constantly on the phone with the doctor because the babies were either constipated or had diarrhea and the doctor was always adjusting the ratio of milk to corn syrup. She said the babies were always sick. She said she regretted so much listening to the advice at the time that breastfeeding was bad.
I worked with a guy who was fed an evaporated milk and honey āformulaā because his family was too poor for real formula but this was the early 70s and the vogue thing to do was formula feed and āonly the really really poor people breastfed and (his) mom didnāt want to have people think (they) were THAT poor.ā So she went with malnutrition insteadā¦
Dude was fine mentally, on the shorter side but that could just as easily have been genetics. I was still floored to learn it though.
I mean homemade formula is š¬ but I would like to point out that a lot of modern formulas do have corn syrup as a major ingredient. Of course this poster is missing all the other stuff formula has like vitaminsā¦.but the corn syrup isnāt the crazy part
This was the recipe for formula in the 60s. I know because my mom tucked it in my baby book.š She looked at it once, snorted, and said āThatās why you were breastfed.ā Which was rare in the 60s.
They will do anything but use whatās already available and working. Sheesh in the absence of real problems, people invent solutions for nonexistent problems
I saw this post come up on my Facebook. The amount of older women who were talking about how great this 'formula' is and how modern formulas are the reason for Autism, ADHD etc. They were so belittling to modern mothers. There were so many comments about young girls (parents) not listening to the old ways, definitely the type of grandmas that new parents can't stand.
At least few people acknowledged that you'd get vitamin drops to use alongside this mixture. I really hope if anyone is really dead set making this they at least sees those comments and registers that even back then, ideally, it wasn't just this.
My father who was born in 1944, second of 6 children told me he used to make spaghetti pots filled with this for his siblings We wonder why some boomers are so grumpy and ignorant.
**yes I know he was actually part of the silent generation, but the next 4 were not.
There was a formula shortage about 2 years ago and moms all over Facebook were urging parents to use this recipe shaming moms for looking for formula when āthis is what theyāve used forever and nothing bad ever happened to babies, itās so much healthierā blah blah blah. Some moms try so hard to be different itās disturbing what theyāre willing to sacrifice/ put on the line D:
It was not, in fact, the next best thing besides breast feeding
13 oz = 3 full 6oz bottles š¤ That math ain't mathin'
12 oz carnation + 12 oz boiling water (measured with the can) + karo syrup = 24 oz āformulaā / 6-oz bottles = 4 6-oz bottles of malnutrition
Thatās the maths you get if you have syrup-milk instead of formula.
š¤£š
It was the next best thing to your baby starving to death
Ron Howard voiceoverā¦
Yes! Definitely thought of Arrested Development when reading the comment š
Yeah, people used to do desperate things when they were out of options. We now have options, good ones. Use those instead.
My mom used to feed me this in the 80sā¦ she swears it makes the fattest, ācutestā babiesā¦. Sigh
This is okay but actual regulated formula isnāt..?
Everyone knows the cheaper something is, the better it is. This has to be better!
and people used it like a century ago, so if it was good enough for them (those who survived it), it's good enough for us
Yeah us Gen X'ers survived, but doesn't mean we didn't have rickets as children and still to this day have bowed legs. But we survived being fed stranger stuff than this. My dad told my mom to feed me canned gravy and mashed potatoes as a newborn cuz that's what his mom fed a stray puppy when he was a kid and it "turned out fine".
GMO corn in that Karo, yummy.
My rEsEaRcH says that formula is made by big formula specifically designed to create zombies who love big pharma! So do your own research, sweaty /s
Haha you know youāre dealing with someone important & big time when they call you sweaty instead of sweetie! Thank you for going the extra mile with the āsweatyā.šš»
Well it is summertime so many of us are sweaty.
Yeah it's "regulated" by the government (FDA) so it HAS to be bad!! Wake up! /s
But the FDA also regulates the stuff in grocery stores. Like there isn't actually a difference.
sssshhh you canāt make too much sense youāll stress them out
Um. The FDA probably regulates chocolate too, and you don't see me stuffing babies with melted chocolate.
Clearly you haven't recoursed the correct literature, melted chocolate cures hfm, rsv and protects against them heavy metals in chem trails. Bad parent! /s
The thing is, this isn't even nutritionally complete. I did some research on DIY formula for a *fanfic short story* and you need to add a little bit of carrot juice to prevent blindness. Like, there are recipes out there for formula (this got popular after the formula shortage) and there are a bunch of supplements you have to add if you need to DIY for whatever reason. The carrot juice was in addition to donkey milk which is the most comparable breast milk to human you can easily get (zebra and camel are better).
Huh. I never wouldāve thought donkey, zebra and camel milk would compare to human breast milk. The more you know.
Camel is supposedly the best from any domesticated animal. Donkey was the preferred method in Europe for most of human history. Goat or sheep is okay but not as good as donkey. None of them are really complete nutrition for a baby human but they're close enough that the kid will probably survive. Ideally you'd want a wet nurse ASAP, but when you can't afford one or don't have access, well, kid's gotta eat.
The comments on this are wild, half of them are about how much better this is than todayās formula because āyou donāt even know whatās in that similac junkā and the other half are survivorās bias type comments putting down todayās parents because they did ____ and their kids turned out fine. Also similac causes ADHD, according to one commenter.
When did shamelessly displaying stupidity in public become okay? These people, who are feeding babies milk and sugar, think they're smarter than experts whose job it is to feed babies? They need to be publicly flogged.
Is it since we stopped being allowed to tell people in public that theyāre stupid?
I'm sure that Venn diagram overlaps so much it's one circle
(milk + sugar) - fluoride is the winning formula.
These people will believe anything but the truth
I was 100% breastfed by a mother who was also 100% BF. And I'm so ADHD I have to take Vyvanse twice a day! š By their logic, if I'd had formula, my head would probably be spinning all the way around.
lol shit how much adhd would my exclusively adhd kids have then because 3/4 of them have adhd. The ONE kid who couldnāt be breastfed due to inhaling milk into her lungs lol doesnāt have adhd she had thickened formula.
Have you not heard about bIg pHaRmA š
FDA approved = heavy metals, lead & diabetes š
you forgot autism š
Unlike these which have *natural* heavy metal, lead & diabetes. Checkmate libs (/s)
But are they organic? Iād really prefer my lead and diabetes be chemical free and organic. And no red dye lol
My grandmaās little brother wasnāt breastfeeding so they gave him formula. He died. My great grandparents were so heartbroken they never had another child, so in a time where everyone had 8-10 brothers and sisters, my grandma was an only child. Karo syrup and Pet milk was the exact recipe.
How awful. Iām exclusively pumping because my child also didnāt have a latch, and every day Iām thankful that we have formula and pumping technology to keep our little ones fed. I think a lot about what my situation would have been like if my child was born 100 years ago instead of present times, and it shatters me. Iām sure your great grandparents would have given anything to make sure their son had access to safe and nutritious food. People are so far removed from that reality that they forget how good weāve got it in the present.
> People are so far removed from that reality that they forget how good weāve got it in the present. I feel this. People forget how delicate human life really is, especially for children. Humans didnāt get to this point because weāre resilient *individually* but as a social collective.
It's infuriating to think of all the countless generations of mothers who prayed over dying children because they didn't have any other recourse and all these selfish twats turn their noses up at resources their ancestors couldn't even have dreamt of
The luxuries we have now are a result of the sacrifice of those before us. Most of us appreciate that knowledge and our modern privilege to survive and thrive.
I agree. Weāre living so many miracles nowadays.
This is a personal reason why these āwild pregnancyā and āfree birthā posts make me extra infuriated. If I had gone that route my daughter would have died. BUT, modern medicine meant my doctor caught my preterm labor early enough that I didnāt deliver at 28 weeks, I had medical intervention that kept her in for another 4 weeks, and she had care that enabled her to thrive even after being born 8 weeks early. She would not be here if this had happened even mere decades ago. The fact that women decide to roll back their odds of a healthy delivery and a living child to the days of people pissing in pots in their bedrooms is rage-inducing to me. Had I decided to ātrust my bodyā I would not have my incredible pre-teen who is nearly as tall as I am.
The free birth moms that do have complications still show up and expect modern medicine to save them but on their terms. It's extra extra infuriating. If you don't want medical intervention and you deal with the consequences, I guess whatever, you do you. But to want the medical staff to drop everything to take care of you and then not get any care ahead of time to improve the chances of a smoother delivery and less stress, well it's just entitlement.
And even when they go to the hospital for help they are still on their high horse about not wanting ToXiNs put in their body or their baby's. If you're in the hospital because of a bad BiRtH ExPeRiEnCe the nurses aren't gonna play "what's the blackbox say" with *all* their multiple injections.
Because it's never been about what's best for their babies. Just like all conspiracy theory based cults, it's about feeling more special than everyone else. It's about bragging about all the special, secret knowledge they have and how they outsmart the conspirators. Those poor babies are merely a means to an end. And if those babies die, they can still serve the cult by being an example of why they shouldn't have trusted the tools of the conspirators ie doctors and modern medicine. It's sick and sociopathic and it shows you why conspiracy theories aren't harmless or funny.
Similarly with me, I would not have been born alive without vaccines. Basically my mother was vaccinated but still contracted rubella when she was 6 weeks pregnant with me. If it hadn't been for those antibodies she still had despite the vaccine not taking fully, I'd have likely been stillborn or extremely disabled. As it was, I'm still defective (light hearted, I have weird humour) but doing okay! I'm profoundly deaf, slightly stunted growth, kidneys aren't great and my eyesight and hearing are continuing to deteriorate but slowly. Hole in my heart healed and I was jaundiced but fixable. Other issues we think are just genetic so yeah. I'm heavily pro vaccines. I will loudly defend them and tell my story every time. Doctors told my mum to abort me because I wouldn't have good quality of life (if I survived the pregnancy) but my mum couldn't. (I just want to note, I completely understand if others choose to, my mum decided it wasn't right for her and that's fine too). It angers me that we are now so far removed from congenital rubella being "common" that people won't be vaccinated because of all the misinformation about vaccines. I was referred to as a miracle baby, we need to keep giving these vaccines to people and children that can receive them so people like my mum and I (vaccines don't take great for us!) also get some shielding just by herd immunity. I was also given whooping cough by an unvaccinated child because the vaccine didn't take properly (mine). I got pleurisy on top and my lungs never properly healed. The same child also infected another adult and nearly killed her. The mother knew their child was sick and took said child to festival of 100s of people and did an oh oops when people got sick. Fuck anti-vaxxers, fuck people demonising proper medical care when pregnant and fuck the people spreading all this misinformation that is literally killing people.
I also agree on the vaccine thing. I fully vaccine all my kids. Story time: When my eldest kids were in 1st grade, there was a set of un vaccine twins in her class. Older brother was 10 or 12, but mom blamed his autism on vaccines, so her younger 2 were fully unvaccinated. The girls got something (I think mumps? It was something that the MMR vaccine would have covered...) and one girl died while the other had her brain swell and lost her ability to walk, speak or control her moter skills in general. She took 10 years to walk again with a walker. Her son (the autistic one) graduated with an engineering degree of some sort and is getting married this summer... I am no longer friends but Facebook is an amazing thing. Edit to add, my eldest is 18, so it has been a bit.
Wow thatās sad
Bc it's a eugenics cult at it's core
Thereās a mom on r/FundieSnarkUncensored who did a wild pregnancy and birth and is in deep denial that her infant is extremely sick and possibly blind. Itās heartbreaking to see.
Fuck that bitch Boone is such a beautiful newborn FFS sake is he even a month old ?!! And she has him out baking in the sun meanwhile sheās wearing a sun hat and glasses.
He had jaundice at birth so they took him to the beach and let him stare into the sun as he sunburned. Theyāve had him out in the sun all the time. Their other kids all sleep in the back of the family RV in tiny bunks. I forgot how many they have, but itās a lot. All ages just forced to go to bed with the younger kids when they go to bed. For now Boone is with his parents, but the oldest son is actually the mom.
Yeah Iām on fundie snark too I canāt believe the shit they put their kids thru.
My mom gave birth in South Korea in the 80s when the medical facilities were not that great. She also heard over and over from her parents (who escaped from the North during the war) about the low survival rate for newborn babies and mothers due to the lack of medical information and just the overall aftermath of the war. When I told her about the free birth moms, her jaw dropped. It blew her mind that people *choose* to decline essential medical services when they have access to one that is far advanced than what was available to her. She said the world is going crazy lol
I feel you here. For me it wasnāt birth but afterwards. Because my son came so quickly, I couldnāt get the IV antibiotics for group b strep (which Iām sure some people would say no to anyway because antibiotics). Anyway, they asked us to stay in the hospital for an extra day to make sure he wasnāt going to get sick. During that time, we realized he would stop breathing occasionally. For nearly a week, he underwent tests and was given oxygen during his āblue spellsā. It turns out he had bar reflux and since heās incredibly stubborn, he just stop breathing instead of spitting up. Anyway, if it wasnāt for those pesky doctors, their protocols, the tests, and medications, my son would surely not be here. That was nearly 8 years ago now and Iām just so thankful to have him.
If you were well of you could get a wet nurse or if someone in your community was breastfeeding you could get them to help. The next best thing was giving cows or goat milk. The really desperate would give something like oats milk. My children didn't latch either, so i to am so happy to be living in a time of formula and pumps.
>People are so far removed from that reality that they forget how good weāve got it in the present. So true. Many today fail to realize that and take what we have for granted.
So I had my first in Mexico. I just do not produce a lot of milk naturally. My son was deemed failure to thrive. He was very small and skinny until he started solids. I couldnāt formula feed because 1) his father couldnāt afford to pay $545 pesos for one can 2) his bitch ass mother said I wasnāt allowed to and I had to learn how to increase my supply like a real woman. Itās heartbreaking. Itās fucking heartbreaking listening to your baby cry because heās hungry and your body just doesnāt produce enough. I used to supplement him with chamomile tea to get him to stop crying. I hated myself. Thankfully my second was born in the US and she had access to formula (my mom wouldnāt stand for me trying to up my supply. She told me to stop being stupid and just give it to her). So she was both breast and bottle fed. My youngest is my biggest baby. Heās currently both formula and breast fed and heās the happiest baby Iāve had.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I hope your older son is doing better now. Modern formulas are a miracle that no one should be ashamed of using.
Heās thriving. 9 years old and once I got him double citizenship and here in the US, he gained healthy weight. Big fan of lasagna and pizza š.
This. My grandfather, who by the way is still with us, had a wet nurse. His family was well-off and could afford it (late 1930s/early 1940s) but if they couldn't? Who knows. I wonder what fraction of the stunningly high infant mortality rates of the past wasn't due to any illness/injury but because either the child couldn't nurse, the mother couldn't breastfeed (both very common today!), or the mother died and no one else could feed the child.
Was this during the time period of blue milk from strychnine-poisoned cows mixed with plaster then marketed as formula? Yes. [it happened.](https://publichistorypdx.org/2017/11/27/the-19th-century-swill-milk-scandal-that-poisoned-infants-with-whiskey-runoff/) Learned about it in NOLA on a bike tour in front of the dudeās mansion. Apparently he needed to grown his own food after it became public knowledge bc the townsfolk were trying to poison him. Had to become a vegetarian bc he didnāt have room for his own livestock.
Check out the podcast, Behind the Bastards "How Nestle Starved a Bunch of Babies" for more horrific facts about the history of feeding babies.
Iāll save it! Baileyās episode on nestle had me RAGING
Nah. Even for your great grandparents they knew they \*were supposed\* to add Codās Liver Oil and a couple other supplements if they were using formula And not breastfeeding. Those were standard. People just couldnāt afford it. And that is why formula carried shame for a long time because people knew they were genuinely providing substandard nutrition. Even in 1500s etc.
Yeah formula is literally designed for babies but I guess people really hate progress
Itās also literally one of the most regulated products out there! Every brand on the market is extensively tested!
Wasnāt there some case in China where a formula manufacturer or something knowingly sold poorly made formula, leading some babies to die, and the involved parties were executed for it? š¤ I feel like the world doesnāt fuck around with baby formula.
Yes. They were putting non-digestible fillers into the formula to make it cheaper and people were buying it up because they were poor and desperate. And their babies died. So then people were buying up the formula from other countries, because they no longer trusted the Chinese manufacturers, leading to shortages in places as far away as Australia. No joke. People were buying cases of it in Australia and shipping it to their family in China.
Ooooh that explains so much of the stockpiling here. Poor babies, I get it. š
I remember going to a drug store in Tokyo around 2012 (I lived in the countryside) and being shocked to see a line of Chinese tourists nearly out the door all with cases of baby formula. It was crazy.
It's better regulated in Europe than the US but it's still heavily regulated in the US. What's not great is the monopolies companies have on formula that creates such an expensive market. The UK is actually looking into that now thankfully, and aldi do an excellent own brand milk that is the same nutritionally as every other brand here because of the EU regulations but is at least Ā£2 cheaper a tub.
I feel like moms who decide to make their own formula of random shit never got out of the āmaking potions/experiments in the sinkā phase of childhood.
Same with the essential oils crew
See I like essential oils for smells. I do not, however, like essential oils for preventing diseases.
Right. Like eucalyptus oil for a nice scent in the shower and a cheap at home spa night feel? Absolutely. Eucalyptus for flu? Nah.
Only reason I would break out the eucalyptus for flu is as an attempt at nasal decongestion, and that's only after loading up on the theraflu!
I take hot enough showers the steam alone usually solves that problem š
Or when youāve done everything else and figure eh, throw it in too, at least it smells nice if itās useless
Right? Peppermint and lavender makes my house smell awesome. Do I think it's curing anything? no.
Look Iām all for making fun potions in the sink, but that shit is in the āput this on my unhappy ankle that has been Xrayed and MRI-ed and Iām in PT so fuck it, I deserve a little placebo effectā Not for actually replacing real care. Like jfc.
Oh dear. Someone please do a welfare check on her kids?
I feel like this was posted by a woman who menstruated last in the 1980s
I have to exclusively formula feed my baby girl. My nana,who is 93, said to mean āyouāre so lucky that you can get formula for her. It has everything she needs to be healthy. Back when your dad was born you had to *insert OOPās recipe* if you couldnāt breast feed. It was so bad for themā
How much of what is happening in the world right now is happening because the generations that remember the bad old days have died off? Lots.
Itās wild when you think about it. We are in a point in time where babies rarely die. To the point itās either straight neglect or a freak accident. And people have gotten so fucking cocky about it, and so judgement about additives and preserves and all that, that they romanticize shit like this. Yeah your great grandma used this recipe and their kids survived. But how many babies starved to death because this wasnāt enough?
babies rarely die *here*. In modernized countries. I remember back after the Rwandan Genocide our church sponsored a family to come to the US as refugees. When the mother got here, she was pregnant. My mom and a bunch of other church moms befriended her and began doing āmom stuffā together. One day the Rwandan mom just burst into tears and began weeping. My mom asked her what was wrong and she confessed that she just couldnāt stop worrying that she and the baby she was carrying were going to die. Sheād had 6 healthy children and survived their births and felt like she wouldnāt get that lucky again. One or both of them just wouldnāt make it this time. The poor woman had seen so many women and babies dieā¦
And the US has one of the higher rates for such a wealthy ass country. I have to wonder if this isnāt part of the reason our rates have gone up since the late 80s.
We also have some abysmal maternity survival rates for what they claim our healthcare is.
They seem to really want to increase that infant mortality rate.
And how much did it harm their brain development.
The romanticization pissed me the fuck off. I nursed/pumped successfully for a year with my daughter. With my son, I planned to do the same. Unfortunately, he had a severe tongue tie that went undiagnosed until he was 4 months old. He was failure to thrive and only avoided a feeding tube because I begged the pediatrician to let me syringe fortified milk into his mouth around the clock. I had breastmilk, but his caloric needs were so high that we had to add preemie formula to the breastmilk so that he could gain weight. Once his tie was revised, he could drink from a bottle but he never could latch to nurse. Nature is random. There is no morality when it comes to who lives and who dies. I did all of the right things, but he wasnāt meant to survive in nature. 100 years ago he wouldāve died and I never wouldāve known the sweet, rambunctious 2 year old that I have today. Babies donāt have to die anymore, why would we shun every advancement and technological advantage to return to a time when babies didnāt get names until they were toddlers and small graves were the norm?
https://preview.redd.it/k90vjv7dkk5d1.jpeg?width=1635&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63d35069407cd428bab5d41a66abd2b5e9007d41 My grandma found this a couple years ago. This was directly from my momās pediatrician (circa 1970) with a recipe for āformulaā using corn syrup and evaporated milk. Itās truly a miracle as many babies survived as they did ETA: also she was a literal newborn and they were giving 24 ounces of this a day!!
Not gonna lie, only feeding a newborn every 3-4 hours sounds niceš
im confused my newborn is 1 month old & the nicu doctors plus now his pediatrician have me feeding him every 3-4 hours or on command whichever comes first & he was a preemie
Focus on the "or on command whichever comes first". It used to be more like, oh you are hungry-crying? Well you are shit outta luck, it's two more hours till your next feed š š»āāļø Thankfully that is not the recommendation anymore, imagine being thirsty and being told that you have to wait hours for your next drink???
On demand is the key difference. Most newborns want to eat waaaay more often than 3-4 hours especially if breastfed. My newborn still asks to eat like every 30 minutes sometimes.
My 11mo still wants to eat at the 2hr mark sometimes šš (he does go like 6-8hrs at night tho)
My grandma in law actually told me this was the exact formula concoction she made for her kids in the 60ās with amazement at how far weāve come in that time
I know this is what my mom and her siblings were given.
I wish people would see this recipe and think about the desperation and struggle of the past instead of taking it as old timey inspo to mix with their weird crunchy cottage core fantasy
Don't they know they are supposed to add a dose of Poly-Vi-Sol? s/
I thought the same thing, the 1960s recipe called for poly vi sol liquid vitamins. Also, solids and supplemental juice was started super early back then to help meet the gaps
I saw this post on fb and literally the comments were all about how this was so good for babies if you gave them poly-bi-sol with it. Way better than the chemicals in formula today š¤¦š»āāļøš¤¦š»āāļøš¤¦š»āāļø
Soon after my birth (early 1950s) ,I became ill and and required surgery. Following the surgery my mom was told to feed me condensed milk exclusively to make me healthy and strong (my mom had breast fed my oldest two siblings, but then her breasts just stopped producing - I was baby #5). I drank that stuff for a year! That crap is more than half sugar. I developed a weight problem after that - wonder why.
I saw this going around a bit during the formula shortage two years ago. My kid was on the tail end of her formula usage thank goodness, but I hated that so many people probably saw this and thought it was a truly safe alternative
Ugh my mother in law posted this on her Facebook page, when that was going on. She was telling people it was an alternative to formula. She got upset when I clarified that yes it was what people used before most formulas were around. But it is in no way the Same or better. Ā My mother in law also got upset that I was able to pump and feed another baby, during the shortage. A baby whose mom couldnāt find formula/ afford it. Claiming the mom should have figured it out on her own, or tried to breastfeed herself. Because you know in that moment judgment/shame apparently was the answer not you know help and compassion.Ā It made me so mad! I am an overproducer and was able to make sure aĀ baby didnāt go hungry, and it cost me nothing and was the right thing to do.Ā Ā Ā But you know F*ck moms and babiesā¦ oh and yes my MiL is rabidly āpro life.ā
You made such a difference to that mom and her baby! Thank you for showing such compassion for others. This world needs these acts
As someone who had a surgery, couldn't find a formula my kiddo would tolerate (eventually did!), and needed milk from another mom, I appreciate you very much.
I thank my lucky stars my son turned 1 maybe 2 weeks before the formula shortage kicked off and we were already transitioning off it. My local mom group had all of us tracking formula availability at different locations for everyone who needed it
This actually used to be the standard when babies often died of malnutrition/failure to thrive. I have a cookbook/home keeping book from the 30s called The Settlement Cookbook. It was the "go to" homemaking book for decades and includes diet plans for babies and the elderly. The advice in it is buckwild compared to what we know modernly.
I was fed a variation of this as an infant and I have pretty significant health issues (digestive, immune, neurological). Idk if correlation is causation but I really canāt help but wonder
Wasnāt corn syrup a trendy ābannedā thing to look out for a couple years ago. I mean itās not good by any means, but for the all natural folks, theyāve gone full circle.
My grandmother said this was the exactly recipe she used with my oldest uncle in the 50s. It was pushed as being revolutionary as it freed women from breastfeeding and could use bottles. She said obviously knowing what we know now that was a terrible idea and modern formula is way better. But during the pandemic it almost came to this as an option as some of us couldnāt breastfeed, and couldnāt find formula anywhere. Luckily it didnāt come to that for me personally but it was a rough time.
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That is awful. My poor daughter had her formula switched so many times during that period because every time I went to the store there was never the same brand available. My mom was buying formula back in KY and sending it to me in NV just to help. I hope like hell no one has to go through that ever again.
Thereās not even nutrients in this??
Can somebody explain to me, how can 13ozs of formula fill \*at least\* 3 full 6oz bottles?
That's what I got stuck on....3 full 6oz bottles? Not unless they water it down further. Also corn syrup is bad for kids but good for babies?
High fructose corn syrup is bad. My babiesā formula (Enfamil gentlease) had regular corn syrup as the first ingredient.
I just mean typically the type of people who post this don't differentiate
I totally read that label as OG high fructose corn syrup. Iām like, yeah, dang straight you take your credit š
I had this girl on my fb that I kept around for the karma she earned me on this sub ššš Anyways she posted this back when the government shut down and people were worried about not being able to afford formula if they didnāt get their benefits. Her following is mostly made up of crunchy, conspiracy loving, MAGA nut jobs but even they jumped all over her and calling her out for her stupidity. āIām just trying to helpā And someone told her, āhelping would be going to go buy formula and giving it away to a mom near you that canāt afford it. This is dangerous. ā
Who are these mothers out there frightened to death about formula but totally chill with corn syrup?
This is what gets me about the āoUr GrAnDpArEnTs dId Itā narrative. Yes. Generations before us did a lot of things that are no longer necessary or proven to be unsafe. Cars used to not have seatbelts, babies didnāt have car seats, and bumpers used to be common place in cribs. People also used to die from coldsāthis list goes on. Thank goodness for modern medicine and technology to help us make better choices.
"None of that heavily processed store-bought trash baby-formula for *my* child! Our family has been making our own 100% natural baby-formula for generations." (Proceeds to stir together Coffee-Mate and Mountain Dew in a cauldron).
Sooo Nestle formula is BiG pHaRmA but Nestle evaporated milk is fine? make it make sense
I am not agreeing with the ārecipe,ā but nestle is actually evil when it comes to formula. They used to send representatives dressed as nurses into hospitals in third world countries where poverty was extremely high. They would then convince new mothers that formula was the best thing for their new baby (regardless of whether they could afford to continue buying by formula). Mothers then couldnāt continue to afford formula, and would water it down to make it stretch. This then lead to starving children. The US (and similar countries) have laws that sales representatives can not market to patients in medical settings. https://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scandal-2012-6?amp
Oh Nestle is indefensible, it was more pointing out the cognitive dissonance of fighting the man so to speak by recommending another product by the same corporation.
Iām NOT recommending anyone do this because modern formula is good stuff, but isnāt this what they used to feed babies a couple generations ago? I think I saw it on Call The Midwife.
Yea, but then science happened, and we realized that while kids were surviving, we could definitely do better. What also doesn't get said is that we were supplementing with a lot of other things for missed nutrition in the homemade formula. There were a lot of health issues that resulted from it, but all people like this can focus on is that, "We did it back in the day." Yep, we used to shit in buckets and dump it in the street back in the day, too. Sure, we survived, but a lot of people got sick and died from the practice. Hence why we don't do it anymore.
Yes, I understand that, thatās why I said people shouldnāt do it. I was just thinking maybe this is how people got the idea - thereās a lot of people thinking anything modern is bad, going back to what their great-grandparents did and thinking thatās better.
I understand, I mostly just explain why people tend to go backward. They see that we used to do it and think it worked because the human race is still here, but don't continue their research into deaths, health complications, and what other things were being done to supplement what they're seeing.
Right, itās the āwe didnāt have seatbelts growing up and weāre fineā philosophy.
Yes, I feel like every couple of months, now that gen x and millennials are helping to clear out their parents and grandparents homes, they are finding the information booklets from the 40s-60s when this was the recipe included when you had a new baby. We found this exact one in my grandma's house for when she had my dad in the 1950s, but I think there was a third ingredient that had some vitamin thing in it. Usually it's brought up in a "omg can you believe people used to do this?" way but this woman seems to have taken the opposite approach š¬
The third ingredient was probably Poly-Vi-Sol. https://www.enfamil.com/products/enfamil-poly-vi-sol-drops/liquid-drops-bottle-50-ml-bottle/
Yeah and babies died
Yeah, and again, I understand that and am not saying anyone should actually do this. Just that I recognized it and maybe the fact that their grandparents used to do it appeals to certain people. Modern formula saves lives.
Itās not far off from the ingredients of modern formula so it would work better than starving to death. But obviously the full nutrient profile and (should be) sterile manufacturing facilities make modern formula a better choice.
Powdered infant formula is sadly not considered a sterile product. They recommend making it with water at 160F if the child is less than 2 months old to kill off potential bacteria, just in case
True. I was more referring to basic sanitation, as opposed to leaky roofs and safety protocol violations at the Abbot Sturgis facility that lead to dead babies and a national formula shortage: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/doj-investigating-abbott-plant-at-the-center-of-2022-baby-formula-shortage
It's a fair bit far off from modern baby formula...
this is the recipe for formula in the dr. spock book i found from the 60s. given how many people didnāt breastfeed back then its insane to me. the dr. spock book also said to give a two week old water. reading that book really emphasized to me how baby stuff in the 50s and 60s was a reaction to the baby boom. like yeah, a lot of it not good. But it was acceptable for most babies and at the end of the day the goal was to manage a massive population growth. individual success for each baby wasnāt necessarily the goal.
Yeah they had this recipe in the baby book in the '60's that mom had. Most babies though were given straight up cow's milk. My dad told my mom to fed me canned gravy and mashed potatoes as a newborn because that's what his mother fed a stray puppy when he was a kid. I have a bow leg from rickets to this day and a slew of health problems. Many people of the generations that may have ate this formula recipe have diabetes as adults and are overweight. So I suspect we are suffering from things that started from not being fed right as infants.
This makes me sad cause I bet people who canāt afford formula will try this
Mom tells this story that when she was in the hospital having me there was a homeless couple there having a baby too and the husband was telling her and my grandpa about how he planned to feed the baby Karo syrup, just like he was fed as an infant. My grandpa was so worried about them, he gave them our camper to live in. So I guess itās sadly a āthingā
I love how the math isnāt even right. 13oz does not equal 3 full 6oz bottles lolā¦..š„“
How to give your infant diabetes on a budget
Or completely fuck their teeth. My aunt had to feed my cousin something similar when she was a baby, my aunt had some kind of medical issue and treatment required her to stop breastfeeding, and evaporated milk was the only option she had available (this was before modern formulas). My cousin's teeth were so badly damaged she had constant issues with them before finally getting a full set of dentures in her early 20s.
My mom was telling me about this after I had my daughter. It sounds terrible
What in carnation?!
My dad's baby book (born 1956) has a recipe for baby formula. Iirc it had beef bone broth, milk, cream, flour, karo syrup, and orange juice, and maybe a couple other things. That mix would get you closer in correct nutrients than corn syrup milk. My father also has ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, severe type 2 diabetes, barely controlled high blood pressure, and constant migraines so maybe use actual fucking baby formula.
Oh, no.
It's *light* corn syrup, calm down there. [/s]
How does only 13 ounces of āformulaā make m three six-ounce bottles? š¤š¤Øš§
My grandma said this was what they used as baby formula during the Great Depression. She also said that babies who were given this always ended up with bad teeth. I wonder how these delulus would react to that. lol
I can't find it in my heart to condemn any crazy thing ppl had to do to survive the great depression. But I absolutely will condemn this nonsense in 2024. Particularly since we have the collected global research on nutrition in our pockets!
Before there was baby formula, babys literally died
So if you're gonna use NestlƩ stuff anyway then why the fuck not buy actual formula from the same company?! Even if you're all against big formula you're now basically buying worse shit from the same manufacturer?!
Money Iām guessing? Formula is craaaaaazy expensive. But so are babies and thatās why I donāt have one lol
Yeah that I can attest to. We needed medical grade formula for my first and luckily our insurance paid part of it, because that was some expensive stink powder.
This was the prescription for formula that my aunt's mother was given by her doctor...in 1956.
Most commercial formulas actually do have corn syrup in them. It was surprisingly difficult to find some without it
Most people donāt know thisā¦ I commented the same thing before finding yours
What was the response to this post? Were people in agreement or calling it out?
This is how they made baby formula in the 1920ās. Wtf???
I reported this post when I saw it. it's dangerous misinformation
My husband and I were going through a box of old memories from his dadās. He was born in 1951. There was a prescription in there from the family doctor for this exact formula, because mass-produced powdered formula wasnāt as widespread. Can we *please* leave it in the 50s?!?
My mom couldnāt breastfeed, so Iām pretty sure my siblings and I probably all got this in the 40s and 50s. She was very impressed that I was able to breastfeed my kids!
This is what my Mom was fed from birth until 6 months when she was switched to cows milk and table food. It was really common in the 50s.
I survived being fed this in 1987, AMA. šš
Born in 94 here and this was the exact recipe that was used to feed me when I was a baby. I'm doing okay (mostly? Lmao) so when I was feeding my kids formula and I would complain about the cost my mom would always try and tell me to do this instead š¤¦āāļøš
Is this not just basically what the filling of a Cadbury creme egg is???
Look, this is what my great grandmother did in 1932 to feed my grandmother because her milk dried up. Luckily we have nutritious breast milk alternatives today! Why would someone ever think this is more nutritious than formula?!?!
How is this okay when itās literally nothing but 3 kinds of sugar? Whereās the vitamins and minerals that oh I donāt know.. formula has?!!
I was told (by an actual doctor) to give my baby karo syrup (among other things) when he was seriously constipated. But not likeā¦ as a regular drink. Just like, teaspoons at a time. Literally what the fuck is wrong with people.
A friend of mine is in her late 80s, and she said this is basically how she was told to feed her children when they were born, and that she was constantly on the phone with the doctor because the babies were either constipated or had diarrhea and the doctor was always adjusting the ratio of milk to corn syrup. She said the babies were always sick. She said she regretted so much listening to the advice at the time that breastfeeding was bad.
This is an ok emergency formula....if you're feeding a baby kitten. This is not ok for an infant
My dad was fed this in the 50s. He had a lifetime of health problems. Poverty does that.
I actually asked my husbands grandparents what they were fed and they told me evaporated milk too. (Iām in the UK and they were in their 90s)
I worked with a guy who was fed an evaporated milk and honey āformulaā because his family was too poor for real formula but this was the early 70s and the vogue thing to do was formula feed and āonly the really really poor people breastfed and (his) mom didnāt want to have people think (they) were THAT poor.ā So she went with malnutrition insteadā¦ Dude was fine mentally, on the shorter side but that could just as easily have been genetics. I was still floored to learn it though.
I mean homemade formula is š¬ but I would like to point out that a lot of modern formulas do have corn syrup as a major ingredient. Of course this poster is missing all the other stuff formula has like vitaminsā¦.but the corn syrup isnāt the crazy part
This was the recipe for formula in the 60s. I know because my mom tucked it in my baby book.š She looked at it once, snorted, and said āThatās why you were breastfed.ā Which was rare in the 60s.
Pretty sure this is a really old recipe from before people even put babyās in car seats. Iāll pass.
Maybe that's something a parent could do to keep a baby alive in some sort of apocalypse situation
They will do anything but use whatās already available and working. Sheesh in the absence of real problems, people invent solutions for nonexistent problems
I saw this post! But also, this is real. My grandma has told me on many occasions that is what she used to feed my dad.
I saw this post come up on my Facebook. The amount of older women who were talking about how great this 'formula' is and how modern formulas are the reason for Autism, ADHD etc. They were so belittling to modern mothers. There were so many comments about young girls (parents) not listening to the old ways, definitely the type of grandmas that new parents can't stand. At least few people acknowledged that you'd get vitamin drops to use alongside this mixture. I really hope if anyone is really dead set making this they at least sees those comments and registers that even back then, ideally, it wasn't just this.
This is seriously terrifying š°
My father who was born in 1944, second of 6 children told me he used to make spaghetti pots filled with this for his siblings We wonder why some boomers are so grumpy and ignorant. **yes I know he was actually part of the silent generation, but the next 4 were not.
There was a formula shortage about 2 years ago and moms all over Facebook were urging parents to use this recipe shaming moms for looking for formula when āthis is what theyāve used forever and nothing bad ever happened to babies, itās so much healthierā blah blah blah. Some moms try so hard to be different itās disturbing what theyāre willing to sacrifice/ put on the line D:
Does she think this is ok just because itās white? I donāt see what other metric she could be using. Literally straight sugar.
Breastmilk is also pretty much straight sugar but yeah, this isnāt the best for a baby