My babysitter was the first to break the news to me, “Did you hear that they are running out of baby formula?” I had been so wrapped up in caring for my sick kids the past couple of weeks that I hadn’t kept up with the news. When she first said this to me, I was confused by her question and thought for sure I heard her wrong. I mean, we’ve all heard of baby formula recalls and the occasional plant shutting down, but was she actually saying that I wouldn’t be able to find my twins’ formula anywhere?
Once I got all the facts straight, the panic hit
Interwoven into this paramount choice were feelings of shame and guilt at not being able to feed them myself
With the first two sets of twins, I only had to contend with the expectations that I had gleaned over the course of my life from society about the best way to feed your baby: the breast. With my last set of twins born in 2021, deep in the age of social media, I was constantly bombarded with images of women breastfeeding their babies as well as posts about breastfeeding’s superiority.
As a mother who welcomed children into her family via alternative methods, I didn’t feel seen, heard, or represented in the mainstream baby-feeding conversation. Instead, I felt stigmatized for not making greater efforts to secure breast milk for my children.
To be inclusive in this baby-feeding conversation, it’s imperative to expand our notions of what families look like
We need to take into account the many ways in which families are created – adoption, surrogacy, LGBTQ+ parents, and foster families. If the overall tone of the conversation changes from “breast is best” to “fed is best,” then the families that pursue alternative paths to parenthood can make their feeding choices in a less judgmental environment free from reproach.
As it turned out, luck was on my side during this baby formula shortage. I had enough formula to make it to my twins turning one. I had wanted to transition them into milk a little bit after their first birthday since they were born at 37 weeks, but I had no choice but to be flexible. It didn’t make sense to drive for hours looking for formula or find a way to ship international formula across the border like so many other desperate parents. It felt necessary to leave those supplies for babies who really needed it.
Even though President Biden recently invoked the Defense Production Act to combat the national formula shortage and is launching Operation Fly Formula to get international formula into the hands of those in need, I still could not wait the weeks or months for this to increase overall supply.
We started their milk transition this week, and I’m just crossing my fingers that all goes well because I don’t have a backup plan. As the government examines ways to overhaul the baby formula monopoly and the policies that perpetuate a flawed system, I hope we can also take into consideration the diverse ways that children are welcomed into families. Acceptance of this diversity as normal will hopefully translate into a more inclusive and supportive approach to baby feeding.
