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When Mallory Whitmore’s son was born, she made a choice: She would not breastfeed him, at all. This was unusual—most infants in the United States start out receiving some breast milk, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and public health organizations the world over agree that “breast is best.” Whitmore knew about the positives of breast milk—after going through pregnancy and childbirth, it can be virtually impossible to not know. Everyone from doctors and lactation consultants to random people are extraordinarily happy to tell you about the “liquid gold” that is breast milk, rich with qualities that you simply cannot find on the shelf at the store in a can full of powder.
But this was not Whitmore’s first time at this rodeo. This was her second child, and with her first, a daughter, Whitmore did try it, for a bit, thanks to all the pressure to do so. But in that postpartum experience, she also was staggeringly depressed, to the point that she was convinced she’d made a terrible mistake by having a child at all. “While you will never hear me say that trying to breastfeed contributed,” Whitmore told me recently, “I knew that if I wanted to give myself the best shot at avoiding postpartum depression with my second, I needed to prioritize a few things.” Her goal wasn’t just avoiding full-on postpartum depression: She wanted to give herself “a better chance of having a postpartum experience that was really joyful.” And giving herself—and her new baby—the best shot at that joyful experience meant using formula from the get-go.
Whitmore is so committed to formula feeding that she has made it her whole job. She runs the popular Instagram account the Formula Mom, and has written a how-to guide called Bottle Service: Education and Encouragement for Guilt-Free and Successful Formula Feeding, out on Feb. 24. (Two years after she started her Instagram account, it was acquired by Bobbie brand formula, where Whitmore is now employed as the education lead; Bobbie was not involved in the content of the book.) The book is geared not just at exclusive formula-feeders, but anyone looking to incorporate formula into their infant’s diet in some way, which, by the time their kid is 6 months old, will be the majority of parents. Whitmore stresses that she does not think that any one option—breast milk, formula, some combination thereof—is better than another: “There’s no perfect way to feed a baby, everybody just has to make the choice that’s best for them based on their unique needs and circumstances.” She is not here to fan the flames of the baby-feeding wars; she just wants to get useful information to people in a world where most advice is geared toward giving your baby breast milk. Yet, here is what was true for Whitmore, and also for me, and, I think, for way more new moms than we might realize: bottle is best.
I can feel my body unclench just typing that! If you haven’t had a baby recently, you might be wondering why it’s at all a dramatic statement, so let me clue you in. Last June, I was six months pregnant, and I already knew I was planning to use formula exclusively, unless breastfeeding turned out to be easy right off the bat (it did not, so formula it was). I mentioned this fact to a hairdresser (a hairdresser!) who informed me that I really needed to try to breastfeed. After I had the baby, and my delivery had gone off the rails enough that I needed to see an infectious disease doctor, that doctor assumed that I would “pump and dump” my milk when I was on antibiotics. Meaning: take the product of a laborious, round-the-clock process and pour it down the drain, so that I’d be able to breastfeed when I was finished with the weekslong (weeks!) course of medications, because the meds would ruin the milk for the baby. This is the tyranny of “breast is best,” a catchphrase that is one of the most oppressive of new motherhood.
“Breast is best” actually already has a corollary—a retort if you will—“fed is best.” To me, it has the energy of sighing out, OK fine, you can use formula if there is truly no other option to feed your child. It bills formula as a last resort, something to use if the other option is—what, literally letting your child starve? In my circles, it’s basically unheard of to simply decide to skip the whole ordeal and formula feed from the start.
But there are major pros to doing so. Mothers who formula feed can get a full eight hours of sleep right away, including during the period when they are recovering from the not-small medical event of having a baby. Not every night—unless you hire a full-time night nurse. Someone still has to feed the baby. But with formula, either parent can be on duty for the relentless night wake-ups, allowing couples to switch off, or another family member to take some shifts. Breastfeeding, in contrast, requires moms to be up at all hours. It’s not just sleep: Formula allows moms the freedom to spend time away from their babies outside of the house without the time-consuming task of pumping (and figuring out where, out in the world, to pump). When Whitmore’s daughter was 5 weeks old, Whitmore and her husband went on a 48-hour beach trip, leaving the baby with her mother-in-law, along with a supply of pumped milk and formula. It gave them “the time and space to make a game plan for managing my PPD,” she writes in Bottle Service. Part of that plan ended up being quitting the pump.
A common argument in favor of breastfeeding is that it’s “free.” But it’s only free if you don’t properly value the cost of women’s time and energy. In fact, depending on how you look at it, formula feeding can actually be less expensive than breastfeeding. A study published in the Journal of Perinatology in 2023 found that a year of formula can cost between $760 and $2,280. Breastfeeding requires women to eat more, and there’s also the opportunity cost of breastfeeding rather than working; with those taken into account, it can cost over $10,500 for a year. Of course, women who formula feed might still spend that feeding time with their babies, but the point is that the monetary costs of breastfeeding can, when you stack them all up, actually be much higher than buying formula. (Also, you don’t need a fancy brand of formula; because formula is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, any formula is safe and healthy. Wirecutter’s top picks are the store-brand options at Sam’s Club and Costco.)
Economist and health-data-parser Emily Oster’s writing on breast milk vs. formula is commonly passed around to demonstrate that the health benefits of breast milk are, for all the hype, somewhat marginal. Oster herself spent “three frustrating months” trying to get breastfeeding to work at all. That she continued with the effort is perhaps a testament to the sense of accomplishment and joy that can come with even a tricky breastfeeding journey. Though when I read her account, I just saw the opportunity cost—someone who could have been having a better time in Babyland sooner. And not everyone makes it through a tough breastfeeding experience to a place of success. In a New York Times op-ed published this month, writer Nona Willis Aronowitz describes breastfeeding her first child for eight months “because it seemed to be the default.” She found that while she bonded with her daughter through breastfeeding, her partner was sidelined in parenting, and that “the resulting resentment nearly broke us as a couple.” With her second child, she did not exclusively formula feed, though she used formula “early and often,” before formula eventually edged out her breast milk. As Willis Aronowitz notes, lactation consultants can be cold on the idea of combination feeding, as it’s called—when she asked one about how to incorporate formula with her first baby, the lactation consultant “acted as if I’d asked where to score an illegal drug.” That isn’t just ignorance on the part of the lactation consultant: Combo feeding from the start can be genuinely tricky, because it affects the mother’s own milk supply. This worry tends to color the broader picture of combo-feeding, though, long after that might be a concern.
If you consider a baby as a closed system, sure, breast milk is indeed best. But babies are cared for by human beings who have their own needs, and in fact, they benefit from having parents who are able to show up rested (or as rested as possible)—parents who can share the work, a mom who can get just a tiny bit more space in those early, demanding months. I do not mean to imply that my own postpartum experience has been made easy-breezy thanks to using formula—far from it, and indeed, part of the relief of Whitmore’s writing for me is her willingness to be so honest about how hard taking care of a baby can be.
What I know for certain is that it has been a more doable and happy experience for me, thanks to not breastfeeding. For my family, exclusively using formula was the healthiest option. I deemed that health more important than what I think the final argument for breastfeeding is—that it is a magical experience. And sure, because I’ve never done it, I guess I don’t know what I’m missing out on. But when I look back on watching my husband, my mother-in-law, my own mother, or even a neighbor who came over so we could get some rest give my baby a bottle when he was exceedingly tiny, I am filled with joy. When I returned home from the hospital, my husband was the one who read the instructions for mixing the powder and water, and showed me how to do it. Spending months making a batch of “ounces,” as we affectionately call them, in the kitchen, so that our son can grow is magic. In the middle of the night, we sit on a little gray couch and hold him as he drinks, and it’s wonderful.
