Jo-Anne, you are SO right!
In my experience working at WIC and as a hospital OB/peds nurse, it was not
uncommon at all to see families diluting formula. (And I will admit here, to
2000 of my closest friends, that when I was a young mother, on welfare
myself with my first child back in the '70s and being told I "had to" add
formula to my struggling breastfed baby's diet, I did the same thing at
times, when the Food Stamps had run out and so had my breastmilk, I
thought.)
Once at WIC a mom (FFing) called up; her formula, which she had been
diluting,had run out, no more WIC checks or $$, and she had been feeding her
baby (young, a month or two old) fingersful of canned cake frosting,
figuring it would be "better for him" than just plain milk, which she also
didn't have! (Now, why she had canned frosting in her house but no formula
or even milk is beyond me, but there are some things you learn just not to
ask about...)
This was one of the main things I learned in my years at WIC: never imagine
you can anticipate what "foods" desperately poor and not always
well-informed families will feed their babies!
For those of you in cultures where food is often scarce - what foods are
perceived as being appropriate for young babies who for some reason don't
have access to human milk, or even other mammalian milk? It's something that
many families in modern-day US have lost knowledge of, I think. But I'm sure
there are foods that would be considered OK, in a pinch - I can imagine
various gruels or cereals, or mashed sweet potatoes or the like, but I've
heard of some mighty peculiar "foods" (many of which are assuredly NOT real
food!) given to poor (mostly white, mostly rural here in upstate NY) babies.
Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC
Ithaca NY
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