Darillyn, I really like your points.
It's a fine balance.  Yes, any mother who manages to breastfeed her baby at
all is doing something of incalculable value and should know that each drop
and each nursing are important.
But how do we tackle the problem of the mother who breastfeeds well &
easily, whose baby is growing beautifully, and who thinks it really doesn't
matter one little bit if her baby's grandma babysits and gives bottles of
formula (1 bottle at 2 weeks, a whole day's worth at 3 weeks of age)?  This
mother believes hers is a breastfed baby.  Then if he gets an ear infection
(or 2...), she's going to say "they told me breastfeeding would prevent
these things and they were wrong -- my breastfed baby had 4 ear infections
before he was 6 months old.  Breastfeeding didn't work."  She has no way of
knowing that it would have been much worse if she'd given formula from the
start and that it would have been much better if she'd given none at all,
because everyone around her is being so careful just to say "breastfeeding
is great" and is leaving out the bit about how each time the baby gets
formula, both her supply and the baby's physiology take a real hit.

I think one reason formula is presented as different from solids is that
it's more closely associated with very early and extensive
supplementation.  It's true some people will say "give anything, rice
cereal, chicken, whatever, rather than formula" and this is maybe the
position you are wondering about.  Maybe another issue is the route of
delivery.  Formula in a bottle will funnel huge amounts of food into the
baby and will probably cause the end of breastfeeding a lot quicker than
solids that have to be spooned in and go all over the bib anyway.

My husband just handed me a recent cartoon (not usually one of my favorite
strips) where a chef is opening his mail and gets a letter saying "how come
you're so hard on people who use canned cream-of-mushroom soup in their
holiday gravy?" and he says "I have no problem with what people do from
necessity, but what I do object to is them saying it's "just as good as THE
ALTERNATIVE"."
That's an abbreviated paraphrase but I think it's a very worthwhile
distinction.

Elise

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