To ask what people did before formula?

[Annabelleinapickle]

There's always a BF/FF debate but genuinely what did we do before formula existed? It worked fine then, people produced milk? Personally I think it's all the devices, unhealthy crap invented that has made our bodies less able.

My dad was fed cows milk from birth. My gran said her diet was so poor back then ( due to low income) that she couldn't produce milk. She said the milkman gave he a free pint of milk each day for the first week to help out.

As others pointed out, in many cases they died and died in numbers that would be considered horrific today. In 1900 the rate of infant mortality was about 160 per every 1000 live births. It didn't drop below 100 per every 1000 live births until the mid 1920s. By 2000 it was about 8 per 1000 live births.

Things like infantile diarrhea were absolutely rife amongst non-breast fed infants during the summer months as cows milk was prone to contamination during the summer and claimed 20,000 infant lives annually, almost exclusively non-breast fed infants. Home made 'paps' were also made but were difficult and painful for infants to digest so such infants were frequently weak and malnourished and likely to be susceptible to other illnesses. Wealthy women did use wet nurses, but the wet nurse was often a domestic servant living inside their employers home without her own child. Thus the risk of premature death was transferred onto her own child.

As others have said, there was no golden age of breast feeding and community support for breast feeding, certainly not in the past 200 years, just hugely increased infant mortality. My interest in infant care is an academic one and I wouldn't dream of telling people how to feed their babies, but I am profoundly grateful to live in a time and a place where my friends with children can access safe formula milks should they want or need them.

Right, but the thing is that pointing out that pain isn't normal isn't to gloat at women and make them feel like they adre doing something wrong. The fact is that it shouldn't hurt, so pain firstly isn't something that women should feel they have to put up with or push through (of course damaged nipples will be sore, but that's not the same thing as bf itself being painful) because it can usually be managed/abated (wouldn't you want that?), and secondly because pain outside of three specific situations is indicative of problems which need assistance because they can cause other issues like poor milk transfer or lower supply. Someone looking at a latch and saying oh that shouldn't hurt isn't well trained because if a latch is causing pain even when it 'looks right' it needs investigation.

cap I agree about the short hospital stays not helping. My mums generation stayed in for at least a week after a straightforward birth. It's so wrong to turf women out to housework and visitors. That's no way to recover from birth and establish bf.

We've evolved so far away from the hunter / gatherer support groups that would have made bf less stressful. No support for mums (hey, unless you get out the house to a draughty community hall by 10am) and we're expected to do our own gathering and care for siblings single handedly.

That's interesting likedylan. I guess we take for granted that the cows milk we buy now is very safe. Also the majority of people today will have a fridge. I just read a newspaper article that said fridge ownership in the uk was 2% in 1948!

" but I am profoundly grateful to live in a time and a place where my friends with children can access safe formula milks should they want or need them"

Yes - it's just one of the many aspects of modern life that we should all feel grateful for.

That said, we have travelled from a situation where formula was a life saving intervention for babies who would have died from an inability to breastfeed, to one where most babies over a few weeks old are no longer fed on their mothers milk, in one century. This change has been largely driven by commercial pressures, the incompetence of health professionals and cultural ignorance about breastfeeding - is that something to be cherished?

It's the biggest and most radical change in the history of human nutrition - human babies in the west have largely gone from consuming human milk to mainly consuming processed animal milk, and it's happened over only a few generations. In evolutionary terms it would be interesting to see where this change takes us. Brian Palmer was a dental surgeon who wrote about how the human face shape and structure of the hard palate has changed since the advent of bottle-feeding. Prolonged breastfeeding in our prehistoric ancestors resulted in very wide U shaped dental arches and shallow palates, less malocclusion and stronger jaw lines. Modern human palates tend to be deeper, more V shaped, our jaws are weaker and we have more tooth decay, partly because of crowding due to narrow dental arches. Wonder where the human race will be with this in a 10000 years time (if we even exist then)?

The other area which is interesting is epigenetics. There's some interesting work looking at the impact of cross nursing on consanguity in unrelated children receiving milk from the same mother.

It's a very interesting and complex area of research with possible long reaching implications for health across generations.

That said, we have travelled from a situation where formula was a life saving intervention for babies who would have died from an inability to breastfeed, to one where most babies over a few weeks old are no longer fed on their mothers milk, in one century

That's a bit of an oversimplification

Cows milk and rudimentary substitutes weren't just for women who could not physically breast feed. That simply wasn't the case. They were widely used by female factory workers. In certain areas and industries (notably pottery manufacture, textile mills) returning to work weeks after giving birth was the norm. In Lancashire and Yorkshire textile districts, this was the norm during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Also from the early twentieth century onward a number of middle class families chose to use newly marketed.

Brian Palmer was a dental surgeon who wrote about how the human face shape and structure of the hard palate has changed since the advent of bottle-feeding. Prolonged breastfeeding in our prehistoric ancestors resulted in very wide U shaped dental arches and shallow palates, less malocclusion and stronger jaw lines. Modern human palates tend to be deeper, more V shaped, our jaws are weaker and we have more tooth decay, partly because of crowding due to narrow dental arches.

To a layperson that all seems a bit speculative, are there any peer reviewed studies in respected journals that confirm Palmer's ideas? If so how do they isolate out the effects of bottle feeding from other changes in diet or evolution. In terms of dental decay, I'd speculate that massive increase in the amount of refined sugar from the seventeenth century onwards might be a factor.

This change has been largely driven by commercial pressures, the incompetence of health professionals and cultural ignorance about breastfeeding - is that something to be cherished?

In some ways yes and in other ways no. Few things are an unalloyed bad or good. I don't accept the way you characterise the decision making process of those who choose not to breastfeed as being ignorant or duped.

The bottom line is the UK has one of the worst breastfeeind records in the EU ( and a very very long period of maternity leave) and I think that's a shame. It is also a shame that the lwoer your class and IQ in the UK the less likely you will breastfeed. Why does that have to be so?

TheDowagerCuntess absolutely loving the imagery of the cave woman lolling about in her cave after a night of breastfeeding A quick sweep with a branch - Bam! housework done now for some lolling.

I am enjoying this thread immensely. IIRC I was breastfed for 3 weeks then onto pap or baby rice (4th child, born in 1961). I was slightly overweight as a child but I think it was because mum and dad were better off by the time they had me, my three siblings are between 8 and 12 years older, and they could afford to buy more crap.

Breast feeding was not easy for me. I managed 4 months with DD and 4 months with DS but he was getting formula top-ups. There is only 13 months between them so I eventually was only BF DS during the night because it was easier with bottles. DS also had a tongue tie which I don't think helped.

I'd love to see this thread in classics because of all of the personal stories and memories. It's a great read.

" I don't accept the way you characterise the decision making process of those who choose not to breastfeed as being ignorant or duped"

I haven't done this.

The shape of the face has also changed (meaning more children not having space for all their adult teeth) because we eat much softer food than even 40 years ago - much more white bread rather than chewy wholegrain bread, white rice and pasta, meat is bred to be less chewy, we don't need to chomp lots of veg just because that's what's available, etc.

My parents are historians specialising in the Victorian period, so my mum's advice on childrearing was particularly dated! On the plus side, it managed to persuade me it was OK not to be obsessed with wanting to be in contact with my baby all the time, as most workers 150 years ago would be wrapping them up and leaving them in the hedge around their field, and then feeding them and dealing with nappy-cloths every few hours.

Unlike many people, my NCT teacher was great and explained that yes, most mothers can breastfeed IF they had the right support. Then asked "Have you seen at least a couple women breastfeeding pretty much every day of your lives? Have you spent many hours and days hanging out with various breastfeeding women while they do so? No? You haven't grown up with the right support, so don't feel guilty if you find it difficult or impossible - there is some support out there but it may not be enough". I was a stubborn git and sought out advice from about 6 different clinics and support places across south London, including mastering Croydon's public transport system, but that was mainly because ds only slept in the buggy so I had to get out of the house anyway!

"Cows milk and rudimentary substitutes weren't just for women who could not physically breast feed. That simply wasn't the case. They were widely used by female factory workers"

Prior to the widespread availability and affordability of formula most babies who received no human milk died. Following industrialisation women who were separated from their babies to work in factories and who couldn't cross feed did use substitutes, but it would have mostly complemented breastfeeding, not replaced it entirely.

Babies whose sole diets consist of formula milk, from birth or within a few weeks of birth - that's restricted pretty much to the late 19th and 20th century, which as a proportion of human history is minuscule.

"as most workers 150 years ago would be wrapping them up and leaving them in the hedge around their field, and then feeding them and dealing with nappy-cloths every few hours"

And we all know how happy and healthy the Victorians were...

Re: your NCT teachers comments - she was spot on.

I have been saying for years that low rates of breastfeeding in the UK are a reflection of culture more than they are of biology and been flamed over and over again for it. Breastfeeding is a pretty robust system but it is rooted in our lived experience of family life and within the contexts in which we give birth and start to raise our babies. So many thing militate against breastfeeding success.

However, as for 'it doesn't matter if you can't breastfeed' - um, no. If you want to breastfeed then everything possible should be done to make it happen. I absolutely don't get why people think it doesn't matter if a mother who wants to breastfeed is forced to bottle feed, but that it's outrageous to suggest to a mum who wants tois formula feeding that if her baby doesn't get on with formula she can just relactate and breastfeed instead - it's no biggie!

"If so how do they isolate out the effects of bottle feeding from other changes in diet"

He's had loads of research published - have a look at it.

For me it makes absolute sense that the shape of a baby's palate and jaw will be affected by feeding method. The action of the tongue and mouth are COMPLETELY different in breast and bottle feeding, and babies spend hundreds of hours doing each over the months they are fully milk fed, let alone if we think about the impact of normal term breastfeeding, which may go on for years. It would be really odd if these things didn't make a difference.

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Dysphagia cafe

I personally think that breastfeeding was simply the norm. So when a baby nursed constantly, or every hour, was fussy, etc, it was considered normal behaviour. There weren't centile charts for health visitors to get obsessed over. I imagine mother in laws didn't have formula to suggest so they didn't. And wet nurses.

Some posters further up the thread suggested a possible link between fairer skinned mothers and difficulties breastfeeding. I'm very fair and after I gave birth to DS last year, I struggled to establish breastfeeding. Two different midwives in the hospital ( in Ireland) asked my if I tanned easily. When I replied that I didn't tan at all, they expressed disappointment as 'the fairer you are, the harder you will find breastfeeding.'
With the benefit of hindsight, I can say that breastfeeding didn't work for me mainly because my DS had an undiagnosed tongue tie, and it's possible that my inverted/flat nipples didn't help either but who knows, maybe those are more common among the fairer skinned?

Eva if that were the case, fair skinned people probably never would have evolved. I'm sure in some cases it will be a self fulfilling prophecy. I'm certainly glad I had never heard the theory!

Eva, the Nordic countries have the highest rates of breastfeeding in the developed world.

Seriously - why do midwives talk such shite?

"So when a baby nursed constantly, or every hour, was fussy, etc, it was considered normal behaviour"

^^ this.

Eva, the Nordic countries have the highest rates of breastfeeding in the developed world.

They also have good mental health support I believe...

OP I was fed on a combination of cow's milk and tea (not in England ). The neighbour advised my Mom on when to change the proportion of milk and tea. I know. It sounds weird to me, too.

I'm pretty much Snow White myself and once I learned that:

1. Only being able to pump 15mls did not indicate a low supply
2. A baby who nursed constantly was normal
3. If I topped up with formula my supply would decrease
4. Babies aren't meant to feed on a schedule

Breastfeeding got a lot easier!

I think it's racist to suggest that red headed people struggle more with breastfeeding. I am sure there are plenty of black people who struggle in the early stages of breastfeeding. I think the key is knowledge of how to establish breastfeeding rather than ethnic background.

In third world countries the pressure to breastfeed is more immense. If you knew your baby would die then you put up with mastitis and cracked nipples. However in a society where everyone breastfeeds there are lots of people to help you.

In the uk breastfeeding support is deemed to be the preserve of the medically qualified who may have never successfully breastfed themselves. Women in the uk ask a health visitor, where as someone in the Amazon jungle would ask their sister or mother or aunt. The Amazon Indian breastfeeding advice is probably more effective than uk health visitors with their stupid scales.