It confuses me that mothers who don't breast feed, today are are unable to make and process their baby milk. I just cannot understand why the old way is supposed to be so bad for the little ones. (At least until the shortage of store-bought is readily available again.)
My first child was born in 1956. My doctor was a pediatrician. When I came home from a week in the hospital (yes, they kept new mothers a week at least) I was given a formula to make up to feed her. I had to prepare this about every other day and it was a joy to see how easily it was consumed. I knew she would be just fine as long as I was sure to prepare and have enough on hand at all times. A year later my first son was born, and within fifteen months my second son arrived. Two years after, my second daughter arrived and I had lots of formula-making experience. They thrived! They all thrived! I worked during those years and still had time for the milk to be processed at home. It only took about an hour to make a batch.
The formula, as I remember it quite well, was one can of evaporated milk, 2 1/2 cups of cold tap water, and two tablespoons of clear Karo syrup. The process was to mix it all together and pour into 6 bottles. Then the bottles were inserted into a wire rack that was put into a special deep pan and filled with water that went about halfway up the bottle. The lid was put on and it was to boil about 30 minutes. It was called a sterilizer. After the 30 minutes the wire rack containing the bottles was lifted up and out to cool before putting the pre-sterilized nipples on them. Refrigeration was important after this. In the beginning the nipples didn't have twist on caps and had tabs to stretch over the opening. If the baby didn't get milk fast enough to suit it, a sewing needle was held in flame and then poked hot into the rubber to make the hole larger. After a couple of years nipples with caps and bottles with threads were used.
Well, I did some searching on the internet and found a picture of the first bottles I had — then found a sterilizer with updated bottles. I also found some information regarding this old method. Funny how all of my kids and my friends' kids all thrived on this. In the current emergency of expensive canned baby powdered formula being difficult to find why can't the old method temporarily alleviate the problem? My opinion is that many mothers are too stressed for time, too dependent on prepared items, too lazy, and/or too ignorant.
Here is what I read: "Regardless of which types of feeding a family chooses for a new baby, most people today would never ever give their infants evaporated milk or Karo syrup. Yet these kinds of recipes are precisely what many mothers were sent home with.
However, use of early formulas was dangerous since sterilization of baby bottles and nipples was not yet commonplace."
I beg to differ! It was commonplace in the 50's! It was all I knew.
