I don't know how much help this will be but, since you don't have any other
responses, yet, I will go ahead and tell you!  During the earily 90s, I got
to know the Meade-Johnson rep, who came to my (now ex) husband's clinic.  I
was volunteering for an adoption agency, and essentially took advantage of
Meade-Johnson's advertizing tactics, to benefit adopting parents.  Few of
these mothers were interested in breastfeeding, and all who were needed to
supplement, to some extent.  With the rising costs of adoption, it really
helped these parents out to be able to give them coupons for free cans of
powder formula.

Anyway, the rep told me that it was better for breastfed babies who were
supplemented with formula to get the low iron varieties, because the iron
fortified could interfere with the absorption of the iron from breast milk.
The diaper bags he handed out to mothers who wanted to breastfeed had a
small can of the low-iron Enfamil in them.  I should have asked him if he
had anything from the medical literature, to back up that claim, but it made
sense to me.

With my adopted kids, I used both commercial formulas and homemade goat milk
formula.  With the last four, who were the ones who got a significant amount
of breast milk from me, I avoided iron foritified commercial formulas.
Besides concern that it might take some of the iron from my milk with it, in
its trip from the baby's mouth to his diaper, I also felt that the low iron
varieties were easier on the baby's GI tract.  Of course, the goat formula
was not iron fortified.  My fifth baby, Joseph, got nothing but goat formula
and my milk (for various reasons, there was no commercial formula that we
could use).  This worried our pediatrician, so we did a hematocrit when he
was about six months old, and it was at the top of the normal range for
infants.  This was despite the fact that he was only getting slightly less
than half of his total milk intake in breast milk.

This is just my opinion, but I would think that the low iron variety would
be far preferable, especially for a baby who was only getting a small amount
of supplement.

Aloha,
Darillyn

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