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 *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html