Babies LOVE Sugar

Baby IK has been eating some formula from the beginning. Just a little bit to supplement my low production boobs. We started out giving her the Similac Advance that we got as a sample can from the hospital. When that ran out, we switched to Earth First Organic which gave her crazy gas. So then we went back to the Similac Advance. The lactation consultant told us that Similac made an organic formula so we were delighted to try that out next.

Similac Organic seemed like the right answer for us -- the organic ingredients assuaged our guilt about having to feed her formula in the first place and IK seemed to tolerate it well. We were psyched to have settled on a formula.

IK's Nana then started mining her contacts at work to get the pharmaceutical rep's opinions about their various products. The Enfamil rep pointed out that the organic Similac contained sucrose as its primary sugar rather than lactose. Sucrose??!? Turns out the third ingredient is cane sugar. That's the same ingredient in swedish fish and Fruit Loops.

Ugh. Back to the drawing board.

Turns out I'm not the only one suffering this conundrum. An article in the NY Times points out what IK and I have already figured out. There are no easy answers to the formula question. We can read every label, every article, every study, but in the end we just have to listen to our babies and our guts and try not to suffer the guilt when the decision you make still doesn't feel like the right one.