Unsolicited advice generally tends to present issues, but in this case, the advice is incredibly harmful due to its inaccuracy and because it scars the emotional well-being of mothers who may have reached their breaking points.

“The ability to breastfeed your child in so many ways is a privilege — it means that you are able to be with your child 24/7, that you have support around you for proper nutrition for the mother, proper hydration for the mother and a safe place to be able to consistently feed your baby,” Hill said.

“You need to be able to be there consistently with your baby and for the vast majority of American women, this is just not reality. And for the vast majority of American women who want to breastfeed, it is not for lack of trying that they’re not able to meet their breastfeeding goals. And so you’re then essentially, I would say, shaming a woman, if she has literally been doing everything right, and still not able to produce enough milk for her baby, and it’s already stressful. And it can be [physically] painful. And so the added layer from other women judging kind of your value as a mother being assigned to this one sliver of motherhood, which is breastfeeding.”

Supplementing breastfeeding with formula is a common occurrence for many mothers. According to the CDC, by the six-month mark, only about 58% of infants were still breastfed. Hill said that means that 42% are supplemented since babies are unable to have any other food substances as infants.

Sometimes the argument for not being able to breastfeed is met with non-FDA-approved recipes from years gone by. Often these recipes are complemented with a “my mother fed me like that and I turned out fine.” However, Hill noted that many of the unofficial formula recipes from older generations didn’t include important nutrients like vitamin D and are likely the cause of conditions such as rickets, which might cause what many know as bowlegs.

“I’m not saying everybody with bow legs had rickets, but rickets is a condition where you have softer bones because of vitamin D deficiency, and homemade formula is notorious for being low in vitamin D,” Hill said.

She also cautioned that formula is considered a food and so it has to be regulated by the FDA.

“Where you get into trouble with these homemade recipes is that they tend to be deficient in [vitamins and nutrients] and there can be really bad outcomes for babies,” she said. “Calcium is often low in homemade formula. And we always think about calcium as affecting the bones, but actually, it has roles in your heart [and] brain. So you can see infants having seizures and also even going into cardiac arrest because they don’t have enough calcium from some of these homemade recipes. Then, the other part is honestly why this one formula company got shut down, and it’s foodborne illness. So if you are giving your infant, for example, raw goat milk or unpasteurized milk to supplement human milk or a homemade formula, you’re at risk for foodborne illness, salmonella [and] E. coli. And that is also what the FDA is helping to regulate.”

Parents might also put themselves at risk of having their children taken away by Child Protective Services. Pediatricians are mandated reporters, so if they notice a child is severely lacking nutrients or appears to be malnourished, they are required by law to file a report.

Breastfeeding

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