Elena mentioned, in her reasons why Women should not Formula Feed,

3.      When they think about the Y2K problem and whether food will be
available for their families.

First, I'll introduce myself.  I'm a long-time lurker who's going through
the Nursing Mother's Counsel's breastfeeding curriculum, in order to become
a breastfeeding counsellor.  I'm very lucky to be in an area where the
initiation rates at our two hospitals are around 97-98%, although no one's
quite sure what our 6 months numbers are (they're doing a study right now).

My "real" job is working at a Silicon Valley company, and one of my main
projects is the y2k problem.  In doing my job, I've had several discussions
with utilities companies who are expecting that there will be at least
rolling blackouts for a few days while they get the bugs out of the system
at the beginning of the year 2000.  This may well be country-wide (sort of
like the universal hurricane).  Not likely to cause serious problems for
your average family (unless it's freezing at that time), but a parent with
a baby will have feeding issues.  And, even if there aren't any problems,
there will likely be panic runs on the grocery stores which could cause
shortages in formula - especially ready-to-eat.

It seems like this may be another good reason to encourage people to
consider breastfeeding... and since there's people who are pregnant now
who will have babies needing formula/breastmilk during that time period,
maybe they'll be more open to the idea.

Anyhow, just a thought...

Back to lurking,

Kirsten Jones
Santa Cruz, CA
Breastfeeding Counsellor in Training