What did people do before formula was invented?

[JollySergeantJackrum]

If they couldn't breastfeed? I've been wondering about this a lot. And were babies weaned much earlier?

One of my grans talks about feeding my dad eggs at 6weeks and the other says her milk disappeared at 6weeks, but neither is very clear about what happened next.

What an interesting thread. I'd honestly never thought much about this before.

CuppaTeaJanice....what a very sad state of affairs . So many people had such very tough lives then.

It doesn't take an awful lot of looking into human history to get very impatient with all those 'Bwaaah! Formula is poison invented by Teh Menz to stop wome breatfeeding' nutters, really. There have always been babies born to women who were unable to breastfeed them, and the invention of an adequate and reasonably safe formula saved a lot of lives. That's not to say that generally BF isn't the best option - just that BF isn't always available, so it's good that there is adequate safe formula available.

This makes very interesting reading. I've been wondering about this recently. I'm reading a book where a girl brings her sister's 3m old baby back to her parents house so that her sister can have a break (although it's obvious the baby is hers), and I was trying to work out how they would be feeding said baby. This is in the early 1800s.

My mum went straight to cow's milk with an egg mixed in.

Alot more women died in childbirth so they had to think of other ways of feeding

Yes wet nursing whent a little wrong in the Victorian time's as more middle class women didn't want to feed there own baby's. But before then it was acutaly seen as a highly desirable job and a women would be well looked after mainly as only roalty and the very rich used paid wetnurses. Ovoulsy there was wetnursing within family's to feed baby's.

solidgoldbrass - but if you read what they did while inveting formula then you wouldn't be so please. A lot of baby's where taken from there mothers in order to be formula fed to how well different group faired. The sort of thing that wouldn't be allowed today due to ethices. Plus companies like Nestle who perurpasly gave out free fromula(inorder to undermine breastfeeding) and marketed it as better then breastmilk (again the reasion why we need advertising standards now). Even now baby's can die from being formula fed and it has huge enviromental impact as well.

We may want everyone to have choice but if we all choce to formula feed then there wouldn't acutaly be enough cows milk in the world to feed all the baby's.

I do think it's great that there is an alternative for those who have reall problems though.

I have a friend who is from israel

she must be late 30's ish.

she was fed cows milk from 6 weeks when her mother had problems... and is now allergic to cows milk

My mother feed me with a cow's milk/water mixture and cereal from about 6 weeks of age - she had awful mastitis and my paediatrician was quite old-school so he recommended the water/milk mix over the available formula. That was in 1979

mil told me that her oldest sister when she was born she wouldnt feed so the parents brought a cow to go in the garden & gave her the milk from that.

My Grandad told me about the woman two doors down from his mother's house who had a very big family and was the go to person on the street if you needed to leave your baby for a few hours as she was happy to breast feed them. She also fed my Great-Uncle when my Great-Grandmother was ill after his birth.

My grandmother had 8 children and had problems bfing them all, she used carnation milk.

My uncle was born prematurely during world war 2 and my Gran's milk didn't come through and he didn't seem to be able to feed from a bottle either. The doctor told my Gran to hold him tight and shower him with love as he wouldn't survive and it would be important for my Gran's emotional wellbeing that she could remember sharing a closeness with her son. My Gran spent weeks in bed with my uncle and was eventually able to feed him carnation milk mixed with whiskey! My uncle is now almost 70.

My paternal Gmother told me that she breastfed her babies until 6 weeks old or until they reached 12lb in weight.

Then they would go onto SMA formula in a bottle, she had her youngest baby in 1943 so formula was definitely in use in the 30s-40s.

What do you mean by the "need" for it? Women have always had problems with bfing.

Yes formula manufacturers are money grabbing etc etc but you can not deny that there is a need for a safe artificial method of feeding.

My dad only told me recently that one of his aunts was his wet nurse once his brother was born and this was in the 1950s. He grew up in a village in the middle of a jungle though so I guess not much access to formula.

My sister was raised on Carnation, she would projectile vomit breastmilk and just kept losing ounces.

As an adult she discovered she had an allergy to fresh cream.

MrsWembley did it say that the baby was 3 months? I thought he was 6months+. Good point though that everyone in the family must have known who was BFing that baby.

(assuming that we are reading the same book :))

Firawla that's brilliant

I suppose the bottom line is that most mothers would do the best they thought they could, whatever that might have been.

Some really fascinating stories on here. I hope people keep adding them.

This subject area would make for a brilliant piece of work for a social historian.

This has been so interesting, although not entirely happy there are clearly loads of stories of people helping eachother out when it mattered.

I can also see that the invention of formula was a Good Thing, for those women who couldn't feed.

my fil's younger sister (she must be around 50 now) wet nursed the neighbors baby when the mother was very weak after the birth.
that was in eastern germany when formula was not readily available.

My mother bfed my brother for a while (not sure how long) and then used Carnation - this was in the mid 60s. I can remember as I am quite a bit older than him. I was formula fed as she got mastitis and my sister was the only one fully bfed.

Amber, I don't think there was SMA formula in the UK in the 30s and 40s - different formulas available in the US by then though. More likely to have been National Dried Milk.

My father was born in 1929 and weighed less than 2lb and was fed Carnation Milk until he reached 10lb in weight and then he was put on to flaked fish and cows milk!