After struggling to make breast feeding work, she switched to formula feeding - and instantly felt more bonded to her baby.
There have also been moves to discourage formula feeding: advertising is not allowed and some hospitals restrict formula milk on the ward.
Though breastfeeding activists are quick to assert that no woman should be made to feel ashamed of their choices, mothers who have turned to formula feeding report feeling judged and criticised.
Since I can not breastfeed I had to make a decision between feeding formula or finding a surrogate.
HIV-positive mothers can still pass the virus on by breast-feeding, so they would need to be provided with formula and taught about bottle-feeding.
For the trial, Flaherman and her colleagues assigned half the babies a couple days of birth to receive two teaspoons of formula after each breast-feeding, via a syringe so as not to encourage "nipple confusion" in which a baby has trouble transitioning between breast and bottle.
"This study goes against everything that's been published for several years now from very reliable clinicians and researchers about the potential hazards of supplementing exclusively breast-feeding babies with formula, " says Dr. Kathleen Marinelli, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and the chair-elect of the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee.
At one week of age, 10% of the formula group was still using formula in some way as part of their feeding strategy compared to 47% of the group originally assigned to breast-feed but who added formula.
In contrast, infants accustomed to the hydrolysate formula appeared relaxed and happy while feeding and drank more of it.
And at three months, 79% of the formula group was exclusively breast-feeding, significantly more than the 42% of moms in the group originally instructed to breast-feed.
Paige Arthur, a 41-year-old Boerum Hill mother, said that when she gave birth in January and her son was in the NICU, the nurses stuffed him with formula and one even criticized her for breast feeding.
And if we're going to remove formula samples for women to promote breast-feeding, we better come up with a plan to feed the babies of that 5% of women who can't sustain them -- with 4 million births a year, that's 200, 000 moms who need extra help.
Breast feeding also resulted in a change in microbes, with formula-fed babies showing more Peptostreptococcaceae bacteria and Clostridium difficile.
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