My wife tried desperately with both of our kids. There’s no way she could due to malformed glands. Multiple specialists confirmed that we had no choice but to feed formula almost exclusively. To this day she has guilt over something that she had no control over.

The formula shortage was one of the scariest parts of my entire life. Some babies don’t take well to certain formulas, and we had to switch them up a couple times, which meant lots of infants with upset stomachs. Nobody got any sleep for months until the FDA started allowing foreign formula into the country. Thankfully we are past formula and onto real food. I remember going to multiple stores where they were all out of the formula that my premature son could eat and the feeling of utter desperation.

You get downvotes because for women who want to breastfeed but can’t it’s devastating and can lead to depression. In addition there’s this cult that tells you that you are a bad mother for feeding formula on every occasion which really does not help.

Depends. Some women cannot have enough milk production, some have over production. It’s a bit of a gamble most of the times. In countries like Brazil there is a sort of system where is possible to donate milk in case of over production, and in case you don’t have or not enough, you can have some of it (not sure about the details, but for me this sounds great).

As for people saying formula is better than breastmilk, believe or not, Nestlé is to blame for this. Back in the day they touted that all over the place, and at some point, they got penalties for saying such bs. The fun part? They are using the EXACT same tactics on some under developed countries so they can sell more. Quite frankly, Nestlé is really up there on companies to despise ( Exxon is possibly the top one, but Nestlé is not really that behind)