The Marketing Myths of Combo Formula Feeding

Internet savvy formula companies equate exclusive breastfeeding with poor mental health, detrimental to sleep, and incompatible with a career. And it's working.

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More and more, we’re seeing a savvier (more sinister) technique in baby formula marketing: advocating for combo feeding. Premium formula brands like Bobbie and MyHeart are using Instagram marketing to speak directly to their target demo of health-conscious women who are willing to spend more on formula for better ingredients. These are women understand the superiority of breastmilk and these organic formula companies know it, so they chose a more insidious marketing tactic which is to equate exclusive breastfeeding with poor mental health, detrimental to sleep, and incompatible with a career. Behold here’s an Insta ad from Bobbie:

via Bobbie

Let me preface by saying, for women who are struggling to keep up their supply-an extremely loaded issue that we’ll be diving into in the coming weeks-combo feeding can feel empowering. Breastfeeding doesn’t have to be all or nothing for every woman, even a teaspoon of breastmilk is better than none. 

However, formula companies are twisting this message, leaving out context and spreading falsehoods that could negatively impact a nursing mother’s supply. Even worse, their ads are directed to women who don’t even need the product. Behold, once more:

Who needs to combo feed? As a lactation consultant, the clients I see who are combo feeding typically have a medical problem like insufficient glandular tissue, a birth trauma they can’t come back from, or breast reduction that results in secondary low supply. I encourage them to keep nursing or pumping in order to provide some breastmilk to the baby because it’s true that every little bit of breast milk helps your baby’s immune system. 

In advertising combo feeding, companies like Bobbie frame exclusive breastfeeding as the problem and formula as a solution. It’s not your rise-and-grind job, your video-game playing husband, an unsupportive family, or society’s complete lack of material support for mothers that’s making breastfeeding hard, it’s just breastfeeding itself is impossible to do as a Modern Woman.

Bobbie claims that their formula can make breastfeeding easier, longer, and less stressful. These claims are, of course, bogus but they are packaged as simply a photogenic mama sharing her story through a ‘blog post’ on the Bobbie website. But let’s be clear, this is advertising and it’s skirting the edge of legal. 

One blog post on their Milk Drunk (by the way it’s a violation of the WHO International Code of Breastmilk Substitutes to call formula “milk) blog; a mom even claims that combo feeding increased her supply; which is a physiological impossibility.  

Anjelika Paranjpe writes: 

 The craziest thing happened when we started supplementing with formula. My breastmilk production actually increased… And I think we all know why: Way less stress! All of a sudden, my baby’s health and nutrition did not depend solely on the milk I produced.

My theory for Anjelika’s sudden increase of milk?  If she was supplementing then she was likely pumping less, which means longer between pumping intervals, voila: more milk. This is a common myth that pumping less gives you more milk but in reality milk supply decreases over time. 

As far stress goes, it can impact your LET DOWN, not your supply. A gentle reminder: women have breastfed through famine, migrations war, and enslavement, all of which are as, if not more stressful than, life whatever Anjelikah has popping off on her palm pilot. 

A migrant mother walking from Chiapas, Mexico to the US border.

I’ve seen moms for whom breastfeeding is going perfectly switch to combo feeding because of lies like these. Unless you’re going to be making up for those skipped feeds some somehow, your supply will reduce. This is especially critical in the first 6-12 weeks when your body is establishing its supply. 

For some women, a supply decrease isn’t an issue because they’ve made it past the APA’s recommended 6 12-month mark or because they are close to their end goal of breastfeeding. Or maybe it’s not a priority to exclusively breastfeed. That’s fine. 

But for so many of my clients, their number one concern during breastfeeding is not making enough milk for their baby.

These companies then pitch formula as a way to maintain supply but fail to mention how a few weeks of formula feeding at night and breastfeeding during the day without pumping will tank your supply. As many of you know, your breasts are an economist’s dream. Their milk is ruled entirely by demand and supply. When the demand dips, so will the supply.

Via Bobbie

There’s never any instruction on how to maintain milk supply or how to do it to avoid bottle preference. There’s just the empty notion of “it’s okay to supplement, mama!” because combo feeding could:

• Benefit your mental health! There’s no link between formula and mental health. In fact breastfeeding boosts dopamine in a nursing mom’s brain.

• Give you autonomy! This is, uh, a pretty twisted view of autonomy. If you view freedom as reliance on a supply chain, an unseen dairy farm, FDA inspections for safety, and a for profit corporation instead of your own body, then sure.

• Extend your breastfeeding journey! Ok, if you were going to stop breastfeeding all together and formula helped then fine, however, for many women it shortens the journey because combo feeding often kills supply. 

• Make life easier! Why is it that in the quest to make ‘life easier’ or have ‘self care’ breastfeeding is the first thing out the window?

So if you’re formula feeding for convenience but want to maintain your supply, you’d still need to wake up in the middle of the night to pump. What’s more likely to happen? You’ll skip pump sessions, especially overnight and your supply will drop making you MORE reliant on formula to feed your baby. 

Can you guess what Bobbie’s lactation specialist answer is?

Do you think formula companies don’t know this? The sooner you to integrate formula into your baby’s life the longer you’re a customer. Formula companies, even organic ones, bank on mothers losing their milk supply, that’s how they make money. 

Although it’s estimated that only between 5-15% of women are physiologically unable to provide enough breastmilk for their babies, in the United States we have almost 50% claiming that they stopped breastfeeding because of the perception of “low supply.” There’s one surefire way to get low supply: supplementing with formula. 

Bobbie, not only claims that combo feeding is ‘easier’ but also put out messages like this:

The implication, of course, is that breastfeeding is not compatible with female ambition. This is a trope that’s been around for the last 70 years: breastfeeding is time consuming, primitive, and a little disgusting. Same bullshit, different branding.

It’s no surprise that with this sort of messaging dressed up as ‘empowerment’ and ‘support’ that exclusive breastfeeding rates take a nosedive after 3 months. Listen, If combination feeding allows a baby to get breastmilk for longer than he would have, I’m all for it. But promoting formula as a solution to the PROBLEM OF CAREER RUINING EXISTENTIAL CLUSTERFUCK OF BREASTFEEDING hurts mothers, hurts babies, and ultimately makes this world a more hostile place for women and their (incredible, life giving, nourishing) bodies.