In 1986, at the Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington, singing with friends in a swing band on the street, with my son (Gibralter) at age 2 looking on!
Gibralter's Homemade Formula
I made this for my son Gibralter, and fed it to him constantly. We had breastfeeding problems, and I had to feed him a formula but I refused to feed him dead chemical corporate formula, so I had to make my own. My midwife Miriamma Carson gave me an Adelle Davis formula recipe that she had fed to her son. And then I substituted things, and came up with the formula my son drank daily for months as his only real sustenance. My son is now 22 years old and has been phenomenally healthy his whole life. He rarely had even a cold as a child. As I have said above, I make no claims about this recipe. It is merely up here as historical midwifery history, really, as this is one of the ways women fed babies when they could not breast feed before commercial formula came about.
I fed my son this formula in 1984.
MAKE ONE QUART AT A TIME. Mix the following ingredients in a blender, then store in the refrigerator. Shake well before pouring out to heat for use.
1 quart whole milk
2/3 cup distilled water
3 T. pure lactose (decrease to 1-2 T after 3-4 months old) - you can get lactose, which is a milk sugar, in drug stores and some health food stores.
2 t. of Dr. Bronner's Calcium-Magnesium powder
1 Schiff Natural 250 mg. Vitamin C with rose hips, crushed to powder with back of spoon
1-2 t. Lewis Laboratories Brewer's Yeast
pinch of granulated kelp (to help build brain)
1/2 t. cold-pressed safflower, soy or corn (or combo of them) oils
3/4 - 1 t. granulated lecithin (you can get lecithin in most health food stores and drug stores)
1-4 T. plain yogurt (with no gelatin, only with live cultures) - Make sure not to use any yogurt with HONEY as an ingredient, honey is dangerous for babies
I was told that this recipe gave a growing infant all the protein, water, sugar, calcium, magnesium. Vit's C,A,D,B's,E, iron, and iodine in a digestible manner. I have no credentials in this area and have no idea if this is true or not.
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Soy Milk Infant Recipe
This formula recipe came from my naturopathic doctor (N.D.) who is also a Medical Doctor (M.D.) back in 1984. He was not sure how he felt about me feeding my son cow's milk and offered this alternative recipe to me. I never made it up, and never fed it to my son, as I stuck to the recipe above (Gibralter's Recipe). I kept this recipe in case I needed it for a child I had who was allergic to cow's milk, etc. So, again, I make no nutritional or medical claims about this infant formula. It is posted here as a reference, a historical view of what people did in the 1980's when we did not have any healthy alternatives available commercially for baby formula. I know that several of my ND/MD's patients did use this recipe for their kids but I do not know what the health of those kids was. The only infant formula recipe I can vouch for as far as personal experience, and personal experience alone, is Gibralter's Formula, as that is the formula I fed my son who grew up very healthy.
1 quart soy milk (should add human milk fortifier and watch kind of soymilk you use so it supplies enough calories and don't skimp on the maple syrup)
1 c carrot juice
1/4 t. spirulina
1/4 t. nutritional yeast
200 mg. Vitamin D
100 mg. Vitamin C
1 T. Safflower oil
3 T. pure maple syrup
250 UGM Folic Acid
I was told to mix this in a blender, store it in the fridge and to shake before pouring into pan to warm it for bottles.
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.