One of the most controversial topics surrounding the issue of breastfeeding is what a woman should do if she finds herself unable to nurse her baby. An even more prickly subject is whether learning how to make homemade baby formula is a good idea.
I myself nursed all three of my children for an extended period of time. The first two were nursed for two years and the third for three and a half years. I practiced parent led weaning for the first 2 children as I did not want to be nursing and pregnant at the same time. For my third and youngest child, I simply allowed her to wean herself whenever she chose.
I’ve often considered what I would have done should I have found myself unable to nurse. Certainly commercial formulas are not a good option as these highly processed powders are loaded with rancid vegetable oils and denatured proteins. Even the organic baby formulas on the market should be avoided for this reason.
Is Homemade Formula Superior to Donor Breastmilk?
What about homemade baby formula made with milk, kefir, or yogurt from grassfed cows or free roaming, foraging goats? Would this formula be superior to human breastmilk from a donor milk bank?
To me, most folks’ opinion on this issue basically boils down to whether they feel that human breastmilk is suitable for an infant regardless of the diet of the Mother. I am of the persuasion that the breastfeeding Mother’s diet is critical to the nutrient density of her breastmilk. I wrote about this in an article commenting on the news story about a vegan Mother whose breastfed baby died.
Nutrient starved Mother = nutrient poor breastmilk
Science is backing this up. Published 2019 research found that the diversity of beneficial probiotics varies greatly from woman to woman perhaps due to dietary factors.
Color and Creamline of Breastmilk Varies Based on Diet
I know from personal experience how my diet affected the color and thickness of my breastmilk. With my first child, I ate everything organic but did not consume many traditional fats or sacred foods. My breastmilk was white with little cream on the top. My baby was also hungry all the time and wanted to nurse frequently. He also spit up a lot which I now know was my consumption of pasteurized organic dairy and improperly prepared grains during that time.
With my next 2 children, my breastmilk went from white to beige and had considerably more fat simply by adding lots of butter, cream, egg yolks, grassfed meat, and fish eggs to my diet. As an added bonus, my children were satisfied more quickly and stayed full much longer between feedings. They also never spit up unless I ate out at a restaurant or had consumed some low quality, non-Traditionally prepared food for whatever reason.
I sure wish I had frozen a few ounces of that breastmilk before and after my Real Food conversion. A picture would have been worth a thousand words!
Few Breastfeeding Women Follow a Real Food, Traditional Diet
Because the vast majority of women do not follow a Real Food, Traditional diet and because I so clearly observed the difference in my own breastmilk when I made the change myself, I would have chosen to make a homemade baby formula with raw milk from grassfed cows instead of seeking donor breastmilk.
To me, it would have been way too risky and far too likely that the donor breastmilk would have come from Moms drinking coffee or diet drinks, eating fast food, taking over the counter prescription drugs and the like. At least with grassfed cows, you know what they are eating and that they aren’t taking any drugs!
Holder Method of Pasteurization
Then there’s also the huge problem that many donor milk banks pasteurize the breastmilk!
And, no, the “Holder method of pasteurization” used by breastmilk banks is just as damaging as conventional pasteurization at dairy plants.
Yes, the Holder method is not as high (62.5ºC/144.5ºF) as flash pasteurization (71ºC/160ºF or higher), but all the enzymes and probiotics are still destroyed at 48ºC/118ºF, so don’t buy that line frequently spouted by donor bank advocates.
I give my opinion on this topic with one caveat.
If I could have found a few Moms that I knew who were eating a Real Food diet, I definitely would have accepted their breastmilk donations for my child if necessary.
But, from a donor milk bank, this information is 100% unknown. And, with Real Food Moms in the minority, using donor milk is just not worth the risk.
What about you? Would you have chosen homemade formula or a donor breastmilk bank? Why or why not?
If you don’t have access to raw milk, could you use lightly pastured, non-homogenized grass fed milk instead? Also, how was the coconut oil on the video liquid vs. solid?
I think homemade formula is a good idea, but what if you are taking a vacation to a caribbean resort or island. How do you transport this formula, given that you may not be able to make it at your destination?
newborns should not consume dairy from another animal, period. the ratios casein, whey, linolic acid, vital minerals is totally different. unfortunately formula is worse and i don’t need to tell this crowd why. but raw cow dairy is not any better. regardless of the possible bacterial infections, which is not the worse threat about cow dairy…it’s the actual composition of the milk itself. in human milk we have a low amount of a certain type of casein. cow dairy has multiple types of casein. one of particular concern is A1 casein. it formed from a mutation in cows that occurred a few thousand years ago. researchers highly suspect it is this protein that is causing several cognitive dysfunctions (or contributing to symptoms) such as ADD,autism, etc. ration of DHA and RHA is also different in cow dairy. there are numerous variances between cow and human milk. a baby has a sterile digestive tract. human protien molecules are small and easy to break down. cow protiens are large. feeding cow dairy to an infant will double his/her odds of becoming allergic to milk. i know you think that the enzymes help the baby break it down. but where is your science to back this up? or do you just listen to what you read in sally fallon’s book? i’m not trying to be insulting. i’m not saying to drink pasteruized milk. i’m not saying you don’t have a right to non-pasteurized milk. i personally buy non-pasteurized milk from my local farm. and i also have a 6 week year old son. i also cannot breast feed. and i will tell you trying to acquire actual scientific studies and basis for the decision i am making for him, has been interesting. i’ve come across so many websites that just regurgitate what they’ve been told by someone else without any actual scientific basis. the raw dairy people say: enzymes, probiotics, et. left in tact. the formula people say, excess minerals will kill your kid. but actual hard research of either of these things happening or observable in a controlled and reatable way? nothing. not one instance of a child dying from to many minerals like the formula companies will tell you. i searched for hours and could not find one case. and so each susequent formula company or person against raw milk just copies and pastes the message they read without actually thinking, questioning or researching if for themselves. i will go on to say, that yes. people and babies have died from terrible bacterial infections from raw dairy. it has happened. many terrible consequences from formula too. and deaths. it should not be denied. i am feeding my son pasteurized fermented goat milk. i use piima to ferment it. i think fermented milk is the best. add bovine colostrum, coconut oil and brown rice syrup. he’s doing great. i tried the meat formula. and my son was wretched in pain for three days. it was terrifying. with how sensitive and under developed a newborns intestinal tract, i would go so far as to say that the weston price formula is dangerous.
@KimRosas I found this article awhile ago which she talks about the cream in b-milk http://t.co/ONJYIjf
I feel it does matter tremendously what a mother’s diet is like. My son was exclusively breastfed and my diet was not great. I didn’t even eat organically. I was a vegetarian and ate conventional eggs and milk as my only animal products. My son never seemed to be satisfied though he ate on demand and I seemed to have plenty of milk. He also spit up all the time.
My sister-in-law also exclusively breastfeeds her daughter. Her diet is terrible. She does eat meat, but a lot of it is highly processed as is most of her diet. She also eats plenty of trans fats and conventional eggs and milk. Her daughter also seems to not get enough to eat though she is fed on demand. She not only spits up, but has infantile acid reflex. She also is pail, light weight, and has eczema.
If with any of my future children I cannot breastfeed (By the way, my diet has changed and I am on a traditional real food diet thanks to Kelly the Kitchen Kop, and Sarah the HHE. Thanks ladies.) I would take a mixed approach. I think I would try to seek out a source of breast milk from some one I knew ate well, and also feed Sally’s formula.
Sarah, On a related topic, do you know how long an infant should or can be exclusively breastfed? I know people who insist that you don’t have to feed children before 1 year, but that seems very odd to me.
When my oldest daughter was about five months, she was not gaining much weight. An ignorant pediatrician convinced me that I was starving my baby because I must not be producing enough breast milk. After pumping and measuring eight ounces at a pumping, I quickly realized my milk supply was more than adequate. I asked the doctors a few questions. Could she be reacting to something in my diet? Could she have a food allergy since I suffered from food allergies as a child and continue to have extreme environmental allergies? Could it be that her spit up is extreme? I was told that breastfed babies don’t really suffer from food allergies and that it was EXTREMELY rare for a baby to react to a food in her mother’s diet. I was told to hold her after her feeding and not let her crawl around. Most likely the spit up was due to her being extremely active and because she was an early crawler.
Fast forward to today and she has a diagnosed dairy allergy and cannot even tolerate raw dairy. My youngest has had an anaphylactic reaction to cashews and has eczema that we cannot find the cause of. Their allergy issues, in addition to my own, lead me down the path to traditional foods. If I would have known then what I know now!
Knowing what I know now, I would never give my baby donor milk that I did not know the nutrition of the donor. Breast milk provides many benefits to a developing immune systems but I now know that it can also contribute to immune system malfunction.
Don’t we all spend a lot of effort, time and money to ensure every food provided for our children is healthy for them? Why wouldn’t I give the same consideration to my baby?
My son was adopted and pretty much from the day he came home he was given donor breastmilk. We found wonderful local women ( a LOT of them) that donated thier precious milk to us. My son had a lot of risk factors at birth including low birth weight. Today he is one of the healthiest kids. One ear infection when he was 9 months old…that’s it! I attribute his awesome development and health to the wonderful women who donated to us. I didn’t know much about thier diets, but I did request basic bloodwork and wanted to meet each mother and her baby. It wasn’t pasturized since it was directly donated from the mom. I would definitely do it again. I think breastmilk is definitely the best!
I would go with a donor. I did struggle with supply and my son never thrived on formula. When we started him on donor milk, he started gaining weight finally.
We did homemade formula, but used goat milk and brown rice syrup, also bearing in mind that I was still nursing and providing about 1/4 of his daily intake.
Even pasteurized breast milk is still far superior to feeding milk from another animal. You don’t have to eat perfectly to provide nutrient dense milk for your baby. Women in famish-stricken regions of the world are feeding their babies just fine. The body is miraculous as moving what nutrition you do take in to your breast milk.
That being said, we never used milk from a milk bank. It’s very expensive and very difficult to get if you’re baby isn’t sick/premature. I used local sources found through social networking sites and through friends.
I would also argue that feeding a baby under 12 months an excessive amount of dairy (regardless of whether it is grass fed organic or not) can cause serious problems in the long term. As it is, my son is lactose intolerant which I blame on dairy-based formula (we used Baby’s Only and through my research, it is the far superior choice to every other organic formula on the market). Goat milk is much more easily digestible for all species (it is used as a replacement milk in zoos as well). Coconut milk is an excellent vegan option. My son drink coconut primarily now (he is 16 months) as well as the occasional few ounces of breast milk (donated).
I always asked about what sort of medicines/foods, etc.. the donor mom eats.
Trust me when I tell you, as a mother who fully intended on EBF, full term, I did my research. I did an excessive amount of research. Breast milk is almost always the better option, barring certain medications and illnesses.