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Another shortage I don't see as a crisis...

Chuck Ellis

Chuck Ellis

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Location
Tellico Plains, Tennessee
It's been on the news for a week or more about the baby formula shortage.... what did mothers do before formula was invented?
I'm 80 years old, born at home and as far as I know my mother probably nursed me to a point, then switched to condensed milk, karo syrup when her milk ran out and I turned out fine and healthy.... when I started eating table food at a few months old, she mashed vegetables or some times chewed them and then fed them to me.... I know my Grandfather fed all his babies that way and he raised 10. An except for one killed in a car wreck and one catching pneumonia before doctors really new how to treat it, all of them lived well past 75 years into their 90's and one was 102 when she died.

When my son was born, the wife couldn't or didn't want to nurse him and the doctor prescribed a formula.... I could feed him an 8 oz bottle and he would projectile vomit 4 ounces onto the wall.... when I mentioned to the doctor he was throwing up as much as he was keeping down, the doctor said "he'll out grow it".... I got tired of wiping baby puke off the walls, bought a box of powdered milk, added some white karo syrup and baby rice cereal to it and he never threw up again.... he was 4 months old.....
today he's almost 50, 6'2 or 3" tall and weighs about 250.... he didn't "need" a formula, just a little common sense.
 
"to a point, then switched"

That "point" varies with the infant. Introducing cows milk too soon can protein deprive the baby's brain of needed supplements to develop fully. Goat's milk used to be a popular substitute but there doesn't seem to be much use of it anymore.
 
It's all about consumerism.

What can we SELL.

I grew up in a world where the store shelves in a supermarket did not have nearly as many items as there is today. Plus the supermarkets were a LOT smaller and there was NO Walmart.

Mashed REAL carrots with nothing else in there is actually good for you.
 
Marie and I were talking about the news reports on the shortage. They almost always include a warning that home made formula is dangerous. Yet all of our kids had home made formula, as I recall it's something along the lines you described with the syrup and powdered milk. The only thing I can figure is that some parents may be turning to U tube to make their own formula....and that's probably a stupid way to do it. When we made it, it was from a formula the doctor gave us.
 
I was told that i refused to eat some of the "baby food" my family tried to feed me. Then, at a family meal one day, my mother mashed up some butter beans, removing the skin part. They couldn't feed it to me fast enough! Mom asked the doctor about the situation and he assured her there was nothing wrong with giving me some of the same food the adults were eating.
 
Bill Arnold said:
I was told that i refused to eat some of the "baby food" my family tried to feed me. Then, at a family meal one day, my mother mashed up some butter beans, removing the skin part. They couldn't feed it to me fast enough! Mom asked the doctor about the situation and he assured her there was nothing wrong with giving me some of the same food the adults were eating.
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But Momma, I don't like butter beans..... one of the few veggies that I don't care for...we were share croppers when I was young, and so I grew up on pinto beans, potatos, black eyed peas, purple hull peas and corn bread.... still some of my favorites.

When my son was little, about 2 years old, he took a liking to Brussel sprouts... first time I got him to eat a regular salad, he was 12 or 13, he loved it and accused me of never feeding one.
 
Well say what you want doctors, but sometimes formula is required, our first born would not have survived without it... My wife could not produce enough milk and he what a very hard time with what he got... My wife was devitated, and of coarse received a lot of pressure from her mother... Two things her mother went on about, you had to nurse the baby with mothers milk and had to use cloth diapers because that was the way they did it in the old days... I had on problems with the cloth diapers, but the doctor told us that the manufactured ones actually kept. the baby dryer.... We fought diaper rash on the first on the second we went to manufactured diapers. No diaper rash problem with her.. and no one could explain why but my wife produced more milk with the second one.... and the girl did fine on it..
 
Paul Douglass said:
Well say what you want doctors, but sometimes formula is required, our first born would not have survived without it... My wife could not produce enough milk and he what a very hard time with what he got... My wife was devitated, and of coarse received a lot of pressure from her mother... Two things her mother went on about, you had to nurse the baby with mothers milk and had to use cloth diapers because that was the way they did it in the old days... I had on problems with the cloth diapers, but the doctor told us that the manufactured ones actually kept. the baby dryer.... We fought diaper rash on the first on the second we went to manufactured diapers. No diaper rash problem with her.. and no one could explain why but my wife produced more milk with the second one.... and the girl did fine on it..
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One of our gifts when my son was born was a diaper service.... whatever they were laundering them with gave him a rash from day one, tried the paper diapers, same problem, so I got a diaper pail, Deft or Ivory soap and hand washed his diapers.... still had problems with rash, but not quite as much... diaper rash cream Desitin made a fortune off us until he reached training pants. When he was about 2 he decided his bear also had diaper rash and smeared most of a tube on the bear.... that stuff will not wash out of a fuzzy bear... I'll bet it still smells of Desitin.
 
Sometimes the formula is the only choice. Our grandson and latest granddaughter both get acid reflux so bad with breast milk that they can’t keep it down, we’ve been shopping our local stores and taking formula up to our daughter when we visit.

The granddaughter has started eating cereal and other baby foods, so won’t be on it much longer, but can understand the scare for some parents.

When you go to the store there are some brands still there, but they are the same that have caused concern with recalls and other issues so don’t blame parents for using the brands that have gotten hard to find.

On a side note, I don’t think my mom fed me cows milk (but might explain the lack of brain development). She did start feeding us cereal within days of coming home, but that is what her mother did also. We were also all potty trained by a year old, as were my kids, as we used cloth diapers. We didn’t like the wet feeling, where the new diapers are so absorbent that they don’t feel the wetness. It took some convincing to get our daughter to start using them as the grandkids got older, she is now a believer.
 
Chuck Ellis said:
When he was about 2 he decided his bear also had diaper rash and smeared most of a tube on the bear.... that stuff will not wash out of a fuzzy bear... I'll bet it still smells of Desitin.
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My boss at my second job had two children. He wanted another one and his wife didn't. He finally talked her into it and nine months later she gave birth to identical triplets boys. My boss was ecstatic; he loved children and having three more boys was icing on the cake.

Now for the rest of the story. We shared an office suite and my door was directly across the hallway from my boss's office. One day he gets a call and it is his wife. She is screaming so loudly that I can feel the vibrations in my chest. "Do you know what YOUR sons did? They emptied the contents of their diapers and used those contents to finger paint on the wall as far as they could reach from their cribs. YOU have three walls with $#!% smeared on them. YOU need to come home and clean the walls in YOUR son's nursery!"

Everyone in the suite was able to hear this conversation because it was so loud.

We were all laughing as he ran out of the office to go home.:ROFLMAO:

You know, stuff happens and sometimes it happens on your wall.
 
Leo Voisine said:
Mashed REAL carrots with nothing else in there is actually good for you.
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FYI those can actually be a bit high in nitrates for infants and may cause blue baby syndrome due to oxygen deficiency. Ditto celery (which is even more so).

If you look closely at a lot of the 'no artificial nitrate added" preserved meat products you'll notice carrot or celery juice.. which is just for the nitrates. Similar to the "no msg added" products where a major ingredient is "yeast" which is.. well. yeah.. msg.
 
to ,me, its disgusting.

we are not a third world nation and baby formula is not something this country should run out of.

mothers are forced to work today in most states because the cost of living is ridiculous.

I got married and was third year in college, made a few bucks when I could work, my wife made 120 dollars a week before taxes and we survived.

not the same today. single family incomes are tuff, and again, Im totally disgusted this great country cant supply baby formula......only third world nations buy it from other nations, not a political statement, just fact.
 
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