Does anyone out there know when the pharmaceuticals began marketing infant formula? I remember my parents making home made formula from evaporated milk and dextrose, sterilizing the bottles in that huge bottle sterilizer back in 1958 when my brother was born. When my sister was born in 1963, we had to mix up Nutramigen for her bec. she didn't tolerate whatever else there was. So, when did Similac etc. come on the scene? I also remember my mother pumping her milk in 1958 when she came home from the hospital, she used the original "bicycle horn" pump that didn't have a storage bottle attached! Those suckers were strictly for relieving engorgement and the milk was dumped! No one would have thought of her actually BREASTFEEDING. This was in Cleveland Ohio. I was born there 9 years earlier and also wasn't breastfed. My brother born in 1948 in Munich was breastfed for 8 months.... Why did I choose to breastfeed? Me, the girl who asked her sister who was breastfeeding if she felt like a cow!!!Yes, I actually said that!! But I saw that sister's mothering style was so much better than those others who did NOT breastfeed. I also feel that breastfeeding is an entire mothering style, not simply a feeding method. When I teach WIC prenatal classes, I don't teach formula feeding, I tell the moms I know nothing about it, they can speak to the nutritionists about it individually. On Thanksgiving I happened to catch a PBS program about polar bear cubs that had been abandoned by their mother, and adopted by the Denver zoo. The zookkeepers spent lots of time with these twins, and they had a terrible time coming up with a suitable "formula". I used that as an analogy, each mammal's specific milk, etc. But my favorite part of the analogy is talking about how the mother bear goes into the cave to give birth and cuddles with the baby til spring when its time to come out! We need to adopt the "cave mentality!" I tell them that if they aren't going to breastfeed, they still need to hold their babies when they bottlefeed.... Pearl Shifer, IBCLC P.S. Speaking of Cleveland, does anyone know if children born there in 1949 were immunized against pertussis?