Holy cow is modern medicine still as smugly wrong as it’s always been. Every generation laughs at all the stupid stuff the previous generations believed, and then acts so confident that they’ve got it right this time.
And as a result you get unworthy nurses making moms feel intense shame for not “trying hard enough” to somehow magically produce milk.
Stay away from mommy blogs/forums. Those are the most toxic cesspools I've ever witnessed. Things are changing, some of the newer ones are not nearly as bad, but man the judgement is super real.
Nurses are one thing, but personally, the worst is family members who think they know better and don't understand the data and that times have changed.
FORMULA IS PERFECTLY FINE.
B. infantis and human milk oligosaccharides create a feedback loop that encourages the formation of a robust immune system during a critical period [1]. Some formulas contain b. infantis, and some contain 2'FL, the HMO present in breastmilk. The most robust strain is EVC001, which has been shown to be present at a year after 21 days of supplementation. In an observational study, it reduced the diagnosis of necrotizing enterocolitis in very low birth rate infants by 73% [2].
I wish this was common knowledge, but most formulas do not contain these (often they contain other pre and probiotics) and babies are missing out on the specific sugars and bacteria that we know impact the development of the immune system.
1. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00660-7 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35032555/