Rebellion and Baby Formula.

I am not a rebel.  I'm not.  Until I am.  My guess is that it depends on who you talk to on if I fit into the rebel category.  My guess is that I am a conventional rebel, but not a risk-taker.  Is that enough qualifying and justification?

When I choose to be a rebel, I tend to start by being very quiet and then end up telling on myself.  I think it's my people-pleasing tendencies.

You might or might not know that my sweet baby girl has had difficulty gaining weight.  As any mommy would do, I questioned if this was because my breastmilk wasn't right, the formula wasn't right, that it was the glass(es) of wine I had while pregnant--blah, blah.  This has led to about a million weight checks only to come to the conclusion that she has a high metabolism.  High. Metabolism.  Clearly, she did not inherit this from her mother.  The treatment?  Give her more calories by adding extra scoops of formula to her bottles.

The good news is that this is working.  My baby girl is visibly filling out.  And pooping more.  This is a good thing.  Really.

The hold up is that I kind of hate giving her processed formula that smells and tastes foul.  Seriously.  It has a metallic, iron-y smell.  Blech.  Compared to breastmilk, which has only a light sweet smell, the difference is startling.  Well, after much thought and consideration and internet reading, I am rebelling against conventional wisdom.  Going against conventional wisdom is hard for me, but after researching and agonizing, I feel really good about my decision.  The decision?  Whew.  Here goes:  we are feeding Brook-Brook homemade raw goat milk formula.

This may not seem huge to many.  But to me, it's out there enough that I'm nervous to tell her pediatrician.  The truth is, I think we are so entrenched in Western Culture that we can't see that anything else could possibly be right.  For babies, this means that if not breastfeeding, feed your child highly processed formula.  Processed food is the norm.  Just like nasty rice cereal as a first food.  When our chiropractor suggested goat milk formula, as it more closely resembles human breastmilk I was intrigued.  This intrigue was furthered by some reading I have done about "real foods" with as little processing as possible to preserve naturally occurring nutrients.

So our new plan is to make homemade formula and hopefully she will thrive.  It's a lot of mixing.  It's a lot of buying of special ingredients.  It's driving to purchase the raw goat milk from a local farm.  BUT it feels so. right.  A relief.  If I cannot pump enough milk with enough fat for my baby girl, then this makes the most sense.  I know many babies thrive on regular ol' formula.  I'm one of them who had it as a child and I'm okay.  I'm not condemning anyone who chooses that route; heck, we fed Ell regular ol' formula exclusively from 8-12 months.  I just know that buying the least expensive formula from Costco has never sat particularly well with me and the smell just furthered that feeling.

I know there are many who may not agree with the choice.  I can live with that.  Because this feels like the right choice for our girl.  I have a feeling she is going to thrive.  So with that in mind, I am thumbing my nose in the face of convention.. .  and even discussing it openly on a blog.  Who knew?