Unsafe Alternatives to Breastmilk: What happens if you do?

This week on the Milk Minute, Maureen and Heather explore the risks of using unsafe alternatives to breastmilk, such as cow's milk, homemade formulas, and even introducing solids before six months. They discuss the potential health consequences, from nutritional deficiencies to developmental concerns, and emphasize why safe, evidence-based feeding options are crucial for your baby’s well-being.

With the holidays approaching, we often see babies being fed inappropriate foods for their age and developmental stage—like when grandma says, "She ate/drank the same thing back in my day and turned out just fine."

We hope this episode helps you make informed choices about infant nutrition and care, and we wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. We’re so grateful for each of you!

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• Book a Lactation Consult with Heather! Click HERE for the deets.
• Book a Lactation Consult with Maureen! Click HERE to get started.

THANKS TO OUR NEW PATRONS, Samantha Greenberg from Florida and Sammy K from Indiana!

Listener question: Glass or stainless steel bottles? Recommendations?

Mentioned in this Episode:
Ep 159 - Microplastics in Breastmilk
Ep 13 - Breastmilk Storage Options

Prefer to read the transcript? Click Here 

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Milk Minute. Yes, welcome, welcome. We have an episode prepared for you today about some of the maybe not so appropriate things that people have fed their babies and we want to explain to you why that might be.

This comes up quite a bit around the holidays when people are traveling and seeing extended family that have different opinions about what they should or should not be feeding baby. And also this is something that we wanted to bring up for our healthcare providers that listen to this to teach you how to broach that topic and how to maybe recognize it's happening.

Yeah. And it's been something I have been dealing with what feels like an increasing amount since I've really been doing a lot of work with the Plain communities, the Amish communities in my area, and it's been on my mind very recently with a couple of cases, so I thought we could kind of do a little debrief of that too, and I would talk about how I handle that.

Yes, please, please let us know, because there's, you know, ever since you've been telling me about some of the stories in the Amish communities and other places where people have fed their babies things other than breast milk or formula before the six month mark, before they were really ready, I am now realizing, in retrospect, some of the patient visits that I've done, I'm like, I wonder if That's what was kind of going on there.

I wonder if out of desperation with this colicky baby, that's what was happening, where they were giving something that wasn't actually baby approved. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Okay. Well, before we do that, I just wanted to ask how you are. Are you surviving right now? I'm laying down right now. You got to have an episode where you were laying down.

I did. Now I'm laying down. I'm just, I'm just getting my ass kicked and I'm sorry. I don't mean to be downer. Sorry if your name is Debbie, by the way. Cause that sucks that everyone says Debbie Downer, but I don't know. Life's just hard and it's every day is long and the weekends are longer when you have kids.

Sometimes. There's joy in there. You know, there's joy. These little fleeting moments. Moments where your kid does something wonderful and you can like see the world through their eyes, but I mean things are tough I mean a lot of my friends are having a hard time post-election They're worried and you know say what you will but the general vibe of the United States right now and I can, I can feel it.

So I'm a little bit of a vibe catcher. I have to be in my profession. So I'm always kind of like tuned into the energy and the energy is just fricking weird and, and, and tough right now. And then my life is just hard. You know, like I, I can handle a lot, but it's just tough. But then you have moments like Marty, like taking some steps.

Yes. You know, and then me accidentally punching her in the face. Oh my God. No, I, I punched Heather's baby in the face. I was not going to bring that up. I'm bringing it up. I feel so bad about it. She was like, Marty was like sitting on top of me and she went to grab my glasses, so I, like, went to stop her from doing that and, I don't know, misjudge the distance and like punch her in the side of the head.

She gave her the old right hook and Marty was so shocked she just stared at her and Maureen goes, Are you okay? Are you okay? And then Marty starts crying. She goes, you're not okay. You're not okay. I hit her really hard. I punched her baby in the face. And then the best part was after I started calming her down a little bit, Maureen was like, I need to make up with her.

And I was like, okay, here you go. And Marty gets close to her face and took her hand and straight up punched her. pushed her face away and was just like goodbye forever. And then you flashed Marty and she smiled and everything was fine. That's right. Then I just took my shirt off and Marty was like, Oh, no.

Yeah. She's such a little sweetheart. Yeah. And then, and then Heidi can sort of read now. So she, she got some of the foundational stuff. And now she's sounding out words, and it clicked, like she's really good at puzzles. Yeah, she's really good at puzzles, and she likes figuring those out. And I think once the pieces, the metaphorical pieces, fell into place, she finally got it.

So tonight, I taught her how to play Hangman for the first time, and she got it, and she was so excited. She did this little like, Two finger wiggle shoulder dance and she was like, I'm so smart. I'm so smart. And I was like, yeah, baby, you are smart. And I'm so glad I get to finally play interesting games with you instead of all those dumb ass baby games, selfishly.

It's pretty fun when your kid can read. It is. Like a little bit. Even just three letter words. That's great. It is. I'll take it. I agree. Right now my kids have gone from honestly getting along like reasonably well to just screaming at each other nonstop. Hmm. Like no reprieve. And Lyra is like in a, in a phase of making her own space with force.

I'm going to say. Yeah. And so like, she, she's the instigator, of course, for the most part, because she's three and a half and like Griffin will like look in her direction. She's like, you know, and then like, it just starts this cascade of them screaming at each other and like Griffin getting his feelings hurt.

I wish I could tell you that ended, but I, you know, still go at it. Like, I know, but they honestly, like they were getting along so well that I'm hopeful. Like it will, they'll come back to it. I don't know. It's weird because the more they fight, I think the more they care about each other somehow. It's so weird, I don't know.

Like Theo, when he goes to his dad's house, like tonight Heidi walked in her room. They share a room, they have bunk beds. And Heidi said, I miss Theo. She's so sweet about him when he's not here. Of course. But the minute he gets here, she's like, why don't you go back to your dad's house? Oh my gosh. Do you like your dad's house better than our house?

I'm just like, whoa, someone's a little feisty. Lyra has picked up on the teasing tone of voice like that, but doesn't really know when to use it, you know? But she knows, like, it bugs her brother. She doesn't really know what she's even doing, right? And as soon as she picks that tone of voice, Griffin just, like, loses all emotional control.

And he's like, she's making fun of me! And then I have to explain to him that, like, a three year old actually kind of can't make fun of you. Like, it's not Conceptually there. He's just eating oatmeal and she's like, look at you eating. No, a hundred percent. He's that is exactly what happens. Yeah. No, really?

So bad. But Lyra is like, also at the same time becoming this fierce little queen. Okay. Like I have been trying to teach her to not be afraid of spiders. Because she was kind of freaking out. She was, she'll say this. She goes, I'm freaking out. And now I'm still working on that with Julie at the office.

Yeah. But you know, we live in a farmhouse. Okay. We're outside a lot. Bugs happen and I'm trying to teach her to be chill about it. And we're just like, not going to fear bugs. They're just like our neighbors, whatever. So we're working really hard on that. And this, like, honestly. Sort of smallish wolf spider was crawling across the kitchen floor.

So they're pretty big generally, but this one wasn't terribly big. And Lyra clocks it from across the house. And she's like spider and she picks up this Tupperware full of toys and dumps it and sprints across the house with it and like leaps with a feral cry and like slams it over the spider to catch it.

It's amazing. She's like Wonder Woman. And then she was like, I want to keep it as a pet because it will. First I was like, I will control my fears is what she meant to say. Well, first I tried to put it outside and she like absolutely lost her mind. And I was like, what is happening? And then we realized she wanted it as a pet.

And then you put it in a jar. We put it in the drawers upstairs. Singing the master of the universe poem. I'm the master of my own fate. I, the energy I create is the energy that I receive. Well, then we had a little, you know, a nice time of like, while the spider was still under the Tupperware of like curating the spider's home for the evening and like finding leaves and putting a damp paper towel in so we could like drink water and like, yeah.

And then it very happily sat in there and drank water for like three hours until she went to bed and I let it loose. It drank water? It did. It sat there on the little paper towel and like bit it and then and How could it drink at a time like this? It's been captured. Yeah, it didn't know that. It's a spider.

What a stupid idea. How would it know that? It was just like, thanks for the water, bro. Oh my god, that's funny. And then I just like put it outside. By the way, if you're not familiar with the Master of the Universe poem, I have a story. One second, let me see if I can find it. Okay, so I, I, I can't find the exact thing, but I will tell you, I used to work for an insane chiropractor when I was in college, like freshly in college.

This is not shocking information to me. Yeah, no like this distracts. I was the admin so he also wanted me to do everything else However, this guy was super into like energy. Okay, and he could like move energy around, you know, and I'm like fine It's like breaking, you know, no, okay, like got it. Just he's that powerful And so There was another girl named Miranda who also worked with me, and she was very much, like, strong country woman, okay?

And he gave us each this little card, the Master of the Universe card, and we were supposed to keep it in our wallets. And every day before we started our shift, we would all have to stand in a circle and he would make us shout it at the top of our lungs. And he, it was like, I'm the master of my own fate!

I design the universe. The energy that I create is the energy that I receive. Yeah, I know the poem. Like, you know what I'm talking about? I do exactly know it. Yes, okay. Because I've had a whole lot of men speak this at me. Huh. So we had to yell it though, and he would like get really amped, like, you know, he's not surprising the chiropractic equivalent of like the guy at the gym, like smack in his own chest where you're just like, Jesus Christ.

And then he would say things like, if, if you weren't saying it loud enough, he'd be like, that energy is not going to get new patients to call. In fact, every time the phone rings, I want you to scream new patient. And if it's not a new patient, it's because your energy was not right. He was like, I need you all to put your energy out.

And I was like, is this your marketing plan? Serious question. Heather, I think we just found our new strategy at the office. Yeah. You know what? I need to talk to Julie. Tell Julie. Every time someone calls, she needs to scream at the top of her lungs, New patient! Before she answers. It was insane. I didn't last super long there.

And this is why people think chiropractors are all crazy pants. Chiropractors and midwives. There's really good ones. And then there's the ones on the other side of the spectrum that are just a little bit like doing their own thing. This like spinning babies class I went to with like 40 mostly midwives, right?

Great, but also like not because midwives are sometimes crazy. And I really thought I kind of made friends with somebody. Sort of. I was like, tentative, right? Because I was like, maybe it's not cool. Yeah, we're always cautious when we're making friends. And then we're like, Facebook friended. And then I see a post where she's like, This is my favorite time of the month!

Here's my Young Living shipment! And like, posts all her essential oils that she presumably is peddling to people in an MLM.

To her pregnant clients? I don't know. I didn't read any further. Because I was like, that's an MLM! And I don't need to know anymore. Yeah, maybe, and then you're like, maybe she only wants to be my friend because she wants me to buy oils from her. How do I even know if it's authentic? Hey girly! Just drop it into your DMs!

Hey, I used to sell doTERRA back when I worked at that chiropractic office. No! Can we still be friends? I didn't know! I was young. I didn't actually sell much other than to my mom. Oh, no. That's the most typical MLM trajectory, though, is that you put money into it and you don't sell anything except to your family members and your friends, who you guilt into buying from you.

And then you're like, would you like to join the company? Yeah, would you like to do a colon cleanse with On Guard? Like, no. Anyways, I digress. But yeah, so that happened and I've had a lot of jobs and I have a lot of weird stories. Stay tuned. Stay tuned for next time. This time, however, we're talking about weird things people feed their babies.

Before we get into that though, Heather, do we have any new patrons to thank for this month? Yes, we have Samantha Greenberg from Florida, and we also have Sammy K from Indiana. Well, thank you guys so much for joining our Patreon. If you didn't know, Patreon essentially Fully supports our podcast at this point.

It pays for production. It pays our two podcast employees who are not us, and it keeps everything going. Keeps the lights on metaphorically in podcast land. Which is a terrible metaphor cause you can't see a podcast anyway. We really appreciate you joining our Patreon and donating some of your hard earned money toward this project so that we can spread all this really useful information for free.

We do have a question before we dive into this. So this is a question from an anonymous member of our Breastfeeding for Busy Moms slash Milk Minute podcast Facebook group. And this member says, glass or stainless steel bottles? Does anyone use and recommend? Our daughter rarely gets a bottle, but when she does, we'd like to move to a glass or stainless option.

Does anyone recommend a particular brand? Yeah. We. Did we do an episode on this on the containers? I feel like we did and I because I remember doing just an absolute Ridiculous deep dive into like how those materials affect the cells and breast milk and honestly The conclusion I came to over stainless steel versus glass is like It doesn't matter all that much, and that the thing is, practically, there are very different, there are big differences in using them.

Like, it takes a lot longer to warm up a glass bottle, but you can see what's in it. You can't see what's in a stainless steel bottle. You can warm up milk way too fast. You can warm it up way too fast in a stainless steel bottle. Stainless steel, like, Deforms in the freezer really easily, you know, like all kinds of stuff like that.

Glass breaks when you drop it, you know, I used to make some daycares won't let you have glass, so you can also call the daycare that you're going to use. If you're going that route and just ask them if you're allowed to use glass bottles, yeah, really. I think more than anything, all of your bottles should fit the same nipples.

And the same tops and I do not care of anything else is your preference, but if you have different bottles that fit different rings and different nipples, you are going to infuriate yourself. Also we know this is deep down about plastic, so we'll go ahead and drop our episode on microplastics and breast milk in the show notes as well as that other episode if we can find it.

It's somewhere there, guys. I remember. We were still in the alcove when we did it. That's right. And by the way, if you ever need to search for a topic, the easiest way I've found is just to google Milk Minute Podcast plus sign and then any topic you can think of and something will probably come up. Yeah, and if you put the Milk Minute Podcast in quotations, that's an even better way to search it.

Oh. Because it then doesn't split those words into different search terms, it keeps them as a unit. Maureen knows how to Google better than me. I think I learned that in the 90s. Well, no one told me. And here I am, struggling along. I learned that at the School of the Resurrection in computer class. Oh my, I can't even believe they let you have computers.

And that class was before parental controls. Oh, naughty little Catholic girls. Pretty much once every single computer class somebody would accidentally find porn. Like, without fail, the teacher would be like, search these terms, and then like, a porn site would come up and then she'd like frantically go turn off the monitor.

I'm just picturing because every time, Julie almost googled, what did she almost google today? Soft dong. And that's not what she meant to write, but it came up soft dong, which by the way, this week and it's not gonna be right on time, but it's soft cock appreciation week right now, so it let us down this entire, for the, for the erectile, erectile y different people in our lives.

Okay. The girl that started it is a professional cuddler. Anyway, I've, I digressed again. I'm real tired. We've really gone so off topic. So now let's get into a honestly really serious topic about, you know, what can happen if we feed our babies the wrong foods and how serious that is and also some of the things we've seen and how we managed it.

So again, as sort of a framework for this is I'm a home birth midwife. Right? And I do a lot of work with very rural people and a lot of Amish women and Mennonite women and, frankly, groups that are really undereducated. And so that confronts me with situations I never expected myself to be in doing this work.

Yeah, because you're like overeducated, so your brain is just trying to figure that out. Yeah, and you know, I struggle often when I'm working, say with somebody who's literally had 10 children, like I just helped deliver their 10th baby. I struggle often to figure out exactly what education they need before I leave their house because obviously they have sent to this point raised nine healthy children, you know, and they are obviously a competent parent and a very caring parent to, like, you know, be caring for all of these children and wanting more, but at the same time, I apparently can assume nothing.

And so I sometimes Survivor's bias. Yeah, I sometimes really struggle with, like, do I tell this parent? Like not to feed their baby anything but breast milk when like they've successfully breastfed six children before this. Like it's, I don't know, some of those things do get, you know, left by the wayside when, when giving discharge instructions and things like that.

If it's not the first baby. And what we don't always get in a patient history is like, Oh, yeah, I breastfed all my children, except I also gave them all like beef broth homemade formula and things like that, you know, like people don't casually bring that up in conversation unless specifically asked, usually.

Which, like, it's not a question that's on most of the charting systems. Exactly. And so I've walked into a lot of situations where say at like a two day postpartum visit, somebody, you know, as I'm asking about breastfeeding, they just say, Oh, yeah, well, we're just doing raw cow's milk now. Yep. Or I walk into a house to see a mother feeding her baby a bottle of just water.

Yep. And like how old is the baby? Like one day old . Right. And these are not bad parents. I have to just say this, like, these are not parents who are actively trying to harm their children. These are parents who are actively trying to help their children and doing it from a place of poor education. Mm-Hmm.

right? Because they're seeing their child. You know, say in the case of this water issue, this is a recent one for me. This is a mother who had had many children and all of her children so far had needed like just a little bit of formula supplementation, days like three to four, and she didn't have any at that moment and she saw her baby was lethargic.

and not feeding from the breast well and she didn't have formula and she was like, well, I'll just fill her belly with water for now and keep her hydrated. This is what she told me. She said, I knew she was dehydrated. So I wanted to keep her hydrated until you came and you could help me get some formula.

That's a lot of pressure on you, buddy. Yeah. You know, and that, that's not a bad parent, but it's a parent who made a bad choice. Yeah. And I mean I mean, it's so age dependent too. I mean, I also had a client one time who, gave her baby Pepto Bismol on day two of life because she thought she had a tummy ache.

And that's why she was crying. You know what I'm saying? And like, she just didn't really understand that at all. And I was like, okay, so like crying, let's talk about that. And it goes, like the reason for it is good. Like there's, the baby is showing some kind of sign of something. It has always been from a genuine place of wanting to help your child.

Yeah. Yeah. And it just, again, like I have to say, this all should be taught like way earlier in life. It should be repeated. We should not have to learn all of this stuff immediately, as soon as we have a baby when we're tired, trying to troubleshoot. Yeah. And it shouldn't be all on one provider to give you years of education.

Right, because that's too much. Unfortunately, to like, add on to the Pepto Bismol thing, I have had a lot of parents put essential oils in their baby's bottle to help with colic. Mm hmm. You know, and they're like, Well, yeah, I just put three drops of that essential oil in a one ounce bottle, you know? And I'm like, Okay.

I've also had some patients that will do a tablespoon of K rose syrup. Yeah. For a tummy ache. Actually, out of everything, I'm like, okay, it could be worse. Or like Coke syrup. You know, they'll just do like a shot of Coke and I'm like, oh, right. Like Coca Cola, not cocaine. So when we're managing these situations I really have found it best to give sort of a basic overview of why this is dangerous.

Because I think. It is not always logical if we're missing a basic understanding of physiology and health and nutrition, which, like, we're not getting in the public school education right now. And, you know, it's a far cry from that in these Amish schools and in many private schools. And, you know, we just can't guarantee everybody has had this basic education.

And so when I talk about it, usually what I start with, say, Say we have someone feeding cow's milk to their baby. Who's you? You? Or goats milk. Or goats milk. Fresh in, you know, to their little newborn. You know, often I say, well, you know, I understand why you would want to feed this to your baby, however, you know, but, but the thing is, we're not goats and we're not cows.

And all of our milks are individually tailored to our species. And best case scenario, if we were to feed our baby this long term, we would suffer malnutrition because we're not getting the right amounts of proteins and things like that. Like, you know, does your baby do what a baby cow does? It doesn't run around all day after you.

We have a lot of different kind of growth that we have to do than cows do. Right. Or goats. But worst case scenario, because our milks are so different nutritionally, we could be in really dangerous territory here because those milks say like goats and cow’s milk have much higher levels of protein and lower levels of salts.

And when we mess with our electrolytes and you know, not everybody knows what those are. So I'm like, those are sort of our basic minerals that we're, we're drinking and eating all the time that keep. The water in our bodies balanced and usable for us. Like when your grandma gets put on a no salt diet because if she eats salt she'll swell up and then her heart will, her heart will have problems.

Yeah. So, you know, so, so sometimes I'll talk about that where I'm like, you know, there might be too much or too little of some of these. You know, very small nutrients that we need. And one of the problems is we have these really small organs that deal with that typically the kidneys and they get overwhelmed really quickly, especially when you're a baby, especially when they're brand new, they're brand new.

The plumbing just got kickstarted, right? And when you're a seven pound human, you know, being overwhelmed by too much salt or not enough salt could send you to the hospital with a life threatening issue. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and, and that could cause seizures. It could cause all kinds of really scary stuff to happen.

And that worst case scenario is not outside the realm of very real possibility. Yeah, the younger the baby the more risky it is and you know I think people get confused too because sometimes when they go to the pediatrician They say you can start trying some solids here and there if you want, but we're not replacing the main food First of all, you don't need to start solids at four months.

So let me just say that that's a whole other thing We have episodes on that but What we're saying is, you're not replacing the main food at that point either. You're offering tastes of things, like your baby's not going to start ingesting large amounts of solids, and they're not going to replace their milk, which is stabilizing their body and the right amount of hydration.

That's the other piece. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's, I think sometimes it's really, I don't know, it can be hard to grasp this sort of thing. But, I, I think I do really like to try to explain it to people, you know, like with the water issue. I was like, yes, hydration is very important for your baby.

But what happens when you're hydrating with just water is it sort of overwhelms your baby's system. And it makes her kidneys work really hard and she's peeing out all the water. And then accidentally, We'll also be flushing out nutrients that she needs because there's so much water going through her kidneys.

It just jacks up the electrolytes again, too. Right. There has to be a balance. It's a delicate balance. I mean Mm hmm. So this is so crazy, but when you were little, did you ever see the Little House on the Prairie movie, The Lord is My Shepherd? Maybe, quite possibly. I did watch. It's where they have the little boy, like they, they, she gets pregnant with her little brother, and the baby won't nurse.

This might actually be one of my earliest lactation memories. The baby won't nurse. She can't get the baby to nurse. He won't eat. He won't eat. Don't know why. Bothers me to this day. They start giving him cow's milk. Then he's anemic and then he's got problems. He goes to the hospital and he ends up dying.

And the whole family has to cope with it. That is what we're talking about here. And that is like literally one of the memories that haunts me. Yeah. And actually, you know, that anemia happens most often with cow's milk. It doesn't have as much iron as human milk. Doesn't have as much vitamin C as human milk.

And What can happen in addition to that is because that cow's milk protein is irritating to the lining of the stomach and intestine, that can also lead to loss of blood, right? In those small amounts that we see in bloody stools, compounding the iron deficiency anemia and just at a baseline, like being iron deficient, you know, is, is not good for your body, but for your infant, yeah, and the goat milk, like the big beef.

There is that it's low in folate. Yeah. So that's good, but right. So that would be like megaloblastic anemia, right? Yeah. But if you have goat milk in the United States, It has folate added to it, you know, so pediatricians will often be like, not goat milk formula. You can't have that. It's low in folate if you're buying it in the EU, possibly, but if it's sold on the shelves here in the United States, it has to have a certain level of folate in it.

Yeah. But anyway. You know, with all this, we're not talking about cow's milk formula and goat's milk formula. Those are specifically, you know, they're taking those base ingredients of cow's milk and goat's milk and adjusting them so that they meet your baby's basic nutritional needs. With the correct amount of water.

And we do see issues, though, when it's mixed incorrectly. Oh, absolutely. There was a huge hubbub about this during the formula shortage, if you can remember, Where people were watering down the formula to make it last longer. Yeah. And you know what, in our Facebook group recently, I cannot remember what the original question was, but somebody had commented saying that they fortify their baby's milk with formula, you know, and they just decided to do that out of nowhere.

Like, not under pediatric supervision. You gotta calculate that based on weight and everything else. Exactly. And I've seen that a bunch of times too, where people are like, Well, I just started adding a scoop of formula to her breast milk and she's doing much better now. And I'm like, Okay. She's shitting whole turds.

Right. Tell me more about how she's doing better. And let's talk a little bit about how we probably should stop doing that. Yeah. If you feel like you need to fortify, that needs to come from a pediatrician. I don't actually do that. Just so you know, I, I don't either. I do not do those calculations and I don't give that recommendation.

If I feel that the baby is in that much distress and it's going to be beyond just like supplementing, like I'll control what I can control on my end. That's a pediatric thing. I am always referring out for that. I agree, I have told a lot of people to talk to their pediatricians about that option and had a lot of peds like send people with a letter saying their instructions and they're like go figure this out with your lactation consultant.

Yeah, they do kick it back to me, which is fine, but I'm not going to write that order because this because of this shit, this is why when people, this is why when in the NICU, they have that giant team of people that rounds on every single baby, there's always a nutritionist, because the nutritionist has the most recent weight of the baby.

She has the calculations for how much they're going to fortify with all of the things to make sure that they don't run into this situation. Yeah, absolutely. No. And it's really scary. Like I think for the most part, when people do things like this, it's not baby's entire nutrition. It's just like, Oh, they're supplementing with a bottle of water or a bottle of cow's milk.

And so they don't see these typically these really severe effects, but we would see over time malnutrition and possibly like longer term organ issues. But if we are Primarily feeding something that is inappropriate to baby, not breast milk and not formula. We're going to see this really quickly within days for a newborn.

Yeah, the newborn thing is, is especially tough. I mean, the closer you get to the six month mark, Yeah, I guess you have a little bit more wiggle room. We have more wiggle room every day there. But also, if you feel like you have to do that, you need to be calling somebody. Right, and we need to be assessing, yeah.

Like, do you not have the resources to get formula? We'll give it to you. Exactly. Do you not have enough breast milk? We can help you with that. Or we can find you donor milk. Or we can talk about how to increase solids a little bit, and then how much water you need to increase to match that. One of the scariest things that I think I've seen is families feeding their babies unpasteurized cow's milk, like fresh from their own cow, you know, and while I definitely I appreciate that that's a choice that they can make for themselves and their older children and they understand the risks and, you know, doing their best with it.

But newborns and, you know, babies under six months are just at so much of a higher risk for infections and sepsis. I cannot overstate that. Their immune systems are just unprepared. For that level of, first of all, different mammal, different feces, that's definitely getting in contact with that, which is like fine for an adult who has a full immune system.

Right. Or it's fine for an adult to make that choice for themselves, you know, to risk that, you know. I don't know. I don't really mess around with raw milk. I have it available to me. My neighbors sell it, you know. You don't? It's wonderful. I don't. I just, first of all, I don't really like milk myself, so I'm like Why would I drink it?

I would rather just have like fermented dairy products from raw milk and not just have straight up raw milk. Yeah. I've had it before. I think it tastes like lanolin. I, I think it tastes great. I've had it, but I might be okay with it if it was my own cow. Like, I've drank my own unpasteurized sheep's milk when I know how those teats are being cleaned and what is happening there.

How you clean your teats. And I, that, that is a big deal because these animals sit in their own shit just repetitively all day long. Girl, I never thought of that. I kind of always thought about raw milk as being like bougie, like a hippie bougie thing, and you're like, yep, there's poop in there. I mean, probably there is, and you know, the dose makes the poison, right?

Like, a small amount of bacteria is one thing, a larger amount is another. Mm hmm. And there Are of course ways to minimize the risk and like how we are cleaning and filtering and all of that. But yeah, it's not my, it's not my deal. I'm not a raw milk person. Yeah. Okay. So, if you're out there and you have fed your baby any of these things, don't feel bad.

Just call your pediatrician or schedule an appointment with a lactation consultant who's not going to be a judgmental asshole who can explain these things to you. Or if it's something you just started, Just stop doing it. Yeah, just stop doing it. And if you need formula, call your local WIC office or your pediatrician or put it on any of the moms Facebook groups, churches, there are a lot, a lot of resources for this.

And you know, the biggest thing is if you have thought about doing this or if you've done that, then we need to figure out how to support you in, in the reason. For doing that, right? Like, what was the reason is valid. Your reason is valid, right? Your fear about your baby's health, well-being, comfort, whatever it may be, that is valid.

And so, We need to get you the support to properly manage that for your baby. Indeed. All right. Well, good job. Oh, thanks. Yeah. That was, Maureen thought of that. I did. It was a good one. I'm feeling a little traumatized by the subject right now, so I thought it would be healthy to talk about it, and it did.

It feels good. Yeah. I'm gonna, I have one of those on the docket, too, that I'm. I'm stewing up over here. Okay. We'll get to it. Okay. All right. Well, I'm the master of my own No, I'm kidding. I don't need that energy. Are we going to close out with a poem? We're going to close out with a poem. How do you, how do you clean your teats?

We're really losing it, guys. We're once again staying up late in Heather's basement recording this, and we love all of you so much. And thank you for listening to another episode of the Milk Minute. The way that we change this big system is by educating ourselves, our family, our friends, and sometimes our health care providers.

There's lost it. Goodbye, guys. We love you.