When my mother gave birth to my eldest sister in the 1960s, breastfeeding was not in fashion. If you wanted the best for your child, formula milk was what you fed him or her. It was even touted as better than breast milk.
“After I delivered your sister, she was started on formula milk at the hospital. They sent me home with milk samples,” she recalled.
“Being a young first-time mum, I didn’t know much about the benefits of breastfeeding then, so I just went along with it. I had to switch to a cheaper brand though, because we were not well off.”
The rare few mums she knew who were exclusively breastfeeding did so because they could not afford to buy formula milk.
THE GOOD NEWS: MORE MUMS ARE BREASTFEEDING
A national survey showed that in 2021-2022, 97 per cent of Singapore women chose to breastfeed. At six months of age, almost 40 per cent of babies continued to be exclusively breastfed; 10 years ago in 2011, this figure was only 1 per cent.