Feeding Your BABY

Never Just Milk

Why a baby's first food is the most precise nourishment there is — and the sobering history that proves it.

There's nothing quite like feeding a baby. In that first year, what fills the little bottle — or comes from a mother — is, quite literally, everything: the whole of a growing person's nourishment, poured from one source. As a mama several times over, and a woman who loves few things more than making food from scratch, I've thought about this a great deal. And I want to talk about how precious a baby's milk is, and how astonishingly precise — because there's a piece of history that permanently changed the way I see it.

The most exacting food there is

For months, a baby has one job — to grow, faster than that little body will ever grow again — and one source of fuel to do it. Their needs aren't approximate. They require a specific, exacting balance of around thirty nutrients: not too much, and just as importantly, not too little of any single one.

Breast milk is the quiet miracle that meets that need — it contains everything a baby wants, in almost exactly the right amounts, which is why the pediatricians recommend it, when a mother is able, for roughly the first six months. And let me say this gently, because I know how tender it is: if breastfeeding doesn't work out — for any of a hundred reasons, none of which require your apology — a good, properly made commercial formula is a safe and complete and deeply loving way to feed your child. There is no shame anywhere near this table. A fed baby is the whole point.

Here is the history I mentioned. In the late 1970s, a company reformulated a popular soy baby formula and, in the process, left out most of the salt — specifically, a mineral called chloride. One mineral. They had quietly stopped testing for it, and back then — this is the part that's hard to believe — there were no federal rules requiring baby formula to actually contain the nutrients babies need.

Thousands of infants drank it. Many became seriously ill with a dangerous chemical imbalance in their blood; some suffered lasting harm, and at least one baby is reported to have died. All of it traced to a single missing ingredient. Two heartbroken mothers of affected babies went looking for the safety rules that should have caught it — and discovered there weren't any. So they fought, all the way to Congress, until the Infant Formula Act of 1980 was passed: the first law to require that formula contain minimum levels of the nutrients babies need, and be tested, batch after batch after batch. (Over the years, other formulas had accidentally left out a vitamin here, a mineral there — B6, iodine, vitamin K — and each time, babies were harmed.) That hard-won law is the reason infant formula today is one of the most tightly regulated foods in existence.

Getting a baby's nutrition exactly right is so precise, and the margin for error so razor-thin, that a pharmaceutical company full of trained scientists got it catastrophically wrong by leaving out one ingredient.

Which is exactly why — and I say this as someone who makes nearly everything from scratch and adores a good old-fashioned, real-food recipe — infant formula is the one thing I would never make at home, and the one recipe I won't put on this blog. I understand the loving instinct behind the homemade versions completely; it comes from the very best place in a mother's heart. But the FDA and the pediatricians warn against homemade baby formula for precisely the reason that history lays bare: a batch made in a kitchen can so easily be missing something a baby's body can't do without — or carry germs a newborn simply can't fight. And this isn't old news. Just a few years ago, health officials had to sound the alarm after babies were hospitalized from homemade formula that ran short on calcium and vitamin D — one of them suffering brain damage after his little heart stopped. 

If you're able to breastfeed — what a gift; your body makes the most remarkable food on earth. If you can't, or you choose not to, please lean without a shred of guilt on a good, FDA-regulated commercial formula, mixed exactly as the label says, with clean water. And bring your pediatrician into it — for which formula, for how to prepare it, and for anything particular your little one needs. There is no gold star here for doing it the hard way. In this one season, the bravest and most loving thing is simply to give that baby what's proven safe.

A baby is the most fragile, precious trust we're ever handed. And in that first year, "just milk" is never just milk — it's everything. So feed them well, feed them safe, and don't let anyone talk you out of the tried-and-true — least of all your own good, hardworking, from-scratch instincts. Some gifts are best received exactly as they're given.

With love, from one mama to another,

Steffanie

This post shares general, current information and my personal perspective — it is not medical advice. Please do not make or feed homemade infant formula; the FDA and the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly advise against it because of serious, potentially life-threatening risks. Feed infants breast milk and/or an FDA-regulated commercial infant formula prepared exactly per its directions, and talk with your pediatrician about your baby's specific needs. If your baby has been fed a homemade formula, please contact your healthcare provider.