Formula + Breastfeeding Essentials – S4E3

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Welcome to The Parenting Brief. I’m your host, Jessica Stewart Gonzalez, an Arizona working mom and chief of the Office of Children’s Health at the Arizona Department of Health Services. This show empowers parents with expert advice to navigate the ups and downs of raising young children, one episode at a time.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Thank you for joining me for another episode of The Parenting Brief. For all parents, it’s completely normal to have questions about feeding your baby. After all, you want to make sure they’re getting all the nutrients they need to grow and develop properly. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: We’re here to help. Today, we will discuss how to make sure your baby is getting all the nutrients they need, whether you’re using breast milk or formula.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: With us today is Amanda Shumway, the Breastfeeding Peer Counseling Program Manager for the Women, Infants, and Children, known by many as WIC, at the Arizona Department of Health Services. Thank you so much for joining the show today, Amanda. Amanda. Yeah, thanks for having me. Can you briefly explain the nutritional requirements for infants?

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: And if utilizing breast milk and or formula meets those needs?

Amanda Shumway: Yeah. So great question. A lot of parents come to the WIC program and are just curious about like, hey, I’m expecting my first baby. What can I offer them to eat? And so a lot of times parents think about breastfeeding. Parents also think about formula feeding, and then we kind of get into the comparison of like, which one’s better, what nutritional needs need to be met, how long, if we are going to offer breast microformulas, should we offer that, when can solids come in?

Amanda Shumway: And so, I guess the answer to your question in short, Jessica, is yes. Breastfeeding and infant formula meet the needs of those infants who are growing and building those bodies. When it comes to deciding what works for parents and their families best, that is really what the WIC program is all about, kind of tailor made for that family.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: And for those first six months or even up until that year, are the nutritional requirements that an infant has, are they met just by drinking that breast milk or formula?

Amanda Shumway: Yeah, a hundred percent. And so here in Arizona, especially. Around the summertime, parents worry, like, hey, it’s hot outside, should I be offering my infant water, for example.

Amanda Shumway: And so we know that breast milk has a lot of water, and formula has water, and then that’s what they mix the powder into. So, no additional. nutrient requirements are needed in those first six months of life, their bellies are so small and they fill up quickly and empty quickly. And so we want to make sure that everything that we’re putting in there is meeting the need of that growing baby.

Amanda Shumway: And so if we put water in there without anything else, there’s no caloric value to that. That’s not helping that baby grow. And so the water comes from the breast milk or from that commercialized infant formula.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: And for the formula fed infants, the nutrients are on the container that is easy to read and easy to see so that parents know what is included to ensure that everything that the infant needs is there.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Is there anything specific a parent that provides breast milk needs to do to ensure they are also producing the right nutrients for their infant?

Amanda Shumway: Yeah, so ultimately, mom’s body will produce what that baby needs. Say she likes to have M& M’s and popcorn and fast food, that’s totally fine. There’s nothing that she can’t have in her diet while she’s breastfeeding, but her body will, will meet the needs of the infants’ nutrition. There are moms in other countries who may not have access to food all the time, they actually tend to breastfeed their children until much later in life just because their body is making that perfect food and other food isn’t available. So, While eating fast food and junk food all the time may not be best, it’s definitely not going to impact the nutrients in mother’s milk or human milk.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: So is there a need for any supplements to be taken either directly by baby or by the parent that is providing the breast milk?

Amanda Shumway: Yeah, so if infants are exclusively breastfeeding and what that means is they aren’t getting any other food, so they’re not getting solid foods, they’re not getting commercialized infant formula.

Amanda Shumway: Doctors will recommend 400 IU of vitamin D drops a day for those infants. Um, you can find them at the regular grocery store. You can find them at Walmart, Walgreens, wherever you shop, you’re able to find those vitamin D drops. And what it is, is it’s a dropper and you just give one dropper full. of vitamin D per day.

Amanda Shumway: Some parents don’t want to offer that to their infants. So they on the back end will take more vitamin D. So that way it’s passed through their milk. They do have to intake a lot of extra vitamin D to make sure that they’re meeting that mark. And that is 6, 400 IU a day. And that would be the oral intake for the parent if they themselves didn’t want to administer the drops to the baby.

Amanda Shumway: But I know that that’s one thing that we ask at the WIC program if they’re exclusively breastfeeding is if they’re offering those vitamin D drops daily.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: And what happens if baby doesn’t get enough vitamin D? Why is that specific supplement so important?

Amanda Shumway: Yeah, so it’s actually pretty interesting. I was looking this up in one of the resources that we have, and it says that babies who are born to vitamin D deficient parents are at a greater risk of vitamin D deficiency, which makes sense, right?

Amanda Shumway: Like, if you grew them and you were low vitamin D, then the end product, which is the baby in this case, is going to have lower vitamin D as well. But, the risk of vitamin D deficiency is that it’s associated with greater incidence of cardiovascular problems later in life. And so that’s why it’s so important to make sure that babies right at the start are getting all the nutrients that they need.

Amanda Shumway: So formula is fortified, with vitamin D to make sure that they’re getting it, so it’s already added to that, but we can’t add vitamin D into our breast milk magically, so we just need to offer that dropper of vitamin D to make sure infants are getting what they need.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: How can parents tell if their baby is intolerant to a specific type of formula or have an allergy to something in the breast milk that is being provided?

Amanda Shumway: Yeah, that’s a question a lot of parents worry about and wonder, especially in those first few weeks when, you know, navigating parenthood is just so hard. So when it comes to like lactose intolerance, for example, a lot of children don’t actually develop lactose intolerance until later in life, about year four.

Amanda Shumway: And so at that point, you know, breast milk or formula isn’t in the question. Another great way to know if the infant is let’s say allergic to mom’s breast milk is in Arizona. We have that great infant screening, right? Newborn screening. And one of the things that is screened for is galactosemia. What that means is the infant can’t break down.

Amanda Shumway: the lactose or the sugar in breast milk. And so in that case, they would need to be on a special formula that doesn’t have lactose in it or that sugar. And so most babies can tolerate breast milk and or formula in some kind of combination one or the other.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Thank you to our audience for following this show and being part of our community. You can check out the resources in the show notes to learn more about infant feeding practices and vitamin D drops for babies. And while you’re there, take a second and share this episode with your parenting community.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Until next time, this is Jessica. You’ve got this.