Formula
The current alarming shortage of baby formula has put me in a time machine. It’s caused me think about my daughter when she was a baby many years ago and when her mother and I fed her formula. I hadn’t thought about that in years.
Giving a baby a bottle of formula is a simple, ordinary act. The baby is hungry, and you know it because she leaves little room for doubt, and so you prepare a bottle and give it to her. She drains it, with great concentration, and then she’s happy. Or at least not unhappy.
I loved to give my daughter her bottle. I cradled her in my arms, steadying the tilted bottle while she emptied it like she was in a drinking contest. I was giving her something she needed. I was the provider. It’s one of the most elemental of human satisfactions.
So those mothers and fathers who cannot provide their child with formula, through no fault of their own, are worried about feeding their babies, of course. But I’m sure something else must be there, and that is the basic idea of not being able to provide. That must be so dispiriting.
I was a stay-at-home dad for the most part. We had some help, so I don’t want to paint a picture of me taking care of her all day, every day. But I often did the shopping, and that included buying her formula. I became an expert. This is one ability I’ve lost, just like the ability to determine a child’s age precisely in months simply by looking at it. All mothers can do this. After I spent a lot of time in the playground, I could, too.
With formula, it was all about prices. I would buy my daughter’s formula at the grocery store, but not exclusively. Formula is sold in pharmacies as well and in discount stores and other places. (We didn’t have a Walmart or Costco back then in New York where we lived.) I kept my eye wide open for sales and price differences. I knew, to the penny, how much formula cost, at every location I went to that sold it. Mothers are frugal because, of course, they have a budget, and especially so when they buy something regularly and frequently. A twenty or thirty cent difference per can is important, and noted. And I did.
There where times when I was pushing my child in her stroller in a store, and I would see a mother about to put a case of formula in her cart, and I would say,
“You know, that’s $24.65 at Duane Reade.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And $25.20 at D’Agostino’s. It’s on sale this week.”
“Oh?”
“That’s a $5.23 savings per case.”
Mothers never looked twice at me. They knew I knew what I was talking about, and they were always looking for a deal. We all were. I dipped my foot into the economy of mothers, and it taught me what skilled economists they are and how much they balance in their heads. Has anyone calculated how much mothers save their families in a lifetime by being vigilant and resourceful? I bet the number is staggering.
I loved taking a can of the formula out of the packaging, shaking it, pouring it into the bottle, and warming it up for my daughter. When she got to the point where she could hold the bottle on her own, that was another of the many milestones as a parent that are both satisfying and a little melancholy. Things you’ll never do, or see, again. This whole formula shortage has reminded me of giving bottles to my daughter and how that time of her life happened only once, and how she moved on from there to the inevitable and proper role of not needing you and saying, as she did so many times, “I want to do it myself.”