World Breastfeeding Week 2014: The History of Formula Use

I am very much a breastfeeding advocate, but I hesitate to vilify formula. I myself have bottle-fed two of my three babies with some formula. As a WIC Breastfeeding Peer Counselor, I work with women who exclusively breastfeed but also many women who struggle with low milk supply or, for other reasons, prefer to feed some formula in addition to breastfeeding or pumping. While formula is unable to replicate much of the components of breast milk, formula has been able to save countless infant lives. We are fortunate to live in a time when we have a breast milk substitute that, while not the same as breast milk, is a viable infant food. Certainly, less than a century ago, this was not the case.