One of the Many Benefits of Breastfeeding

It's Cheap!

Enfamil w/iron, a pretty standard formula. Nothing especially fancy. One 28.5 oz can powder = 209 fluid oz. Though it varies by age, by 3 months an infant is expected to consume 25-35 ozs per day total. Let's take the midrange of 28 oz/day. That means that 28.5 oz can would last 7.5 days. For one year, that would be at least 47 cans per year. At $27/can (the price on Enfamil's website), that would be $1269 for one year, minimum.

Costs for breastfeeding (for me, not all women need this):
Rented hospital grade pump for first 3 weeks of NICU: $100 (incl. kit)
Purchase Ameda Purely Yours double electric pump: $200 (I could have borrowed one for free from WIC since I worked for the Health Dept, but I felt bad doing that...I did have to borrow for a week when mine broke* which was wonderful!)
Nursing bras $100
Nursing tops $100
Freezer bags for expressed breastmilk $50
breastpads $16 (reusable)
breastpads $20 (disposable - which I stopped using after the first 2 months and went to reusable)

That comes to $586. Let's round up and say $600. All except the freezer bags can be used for years, with multiple kids and the bras/tops can be used even when not nursing. Plenty of people don't have to pump, and many women don't bother with the nursing bras/tops. I won't count the bottles I had to buy, as I did have to get a lot at first to try to get Angelina to take a bottle. But if she was exclusively bottle fed, I'd have had to buy more. So that's a savings of $600, only all of the expenses incurred with breastfeeding can be used for more than one kid. Say we have 2 kids, and I spend another $100 on misc. items (e.g. new parts for the pump), that's another $1100 saved....

Of course, the other costs - no chocolate, no caffeine.....
And Fredo said I needed to add the cost of beer, for everytime I said I was having a Guiness "for my milk production." But I am sure I would have had that Guiness anyway....

In Sum:

Formula: $1269/year
Breastmilk: $600/life
Boobs: Priceless


>Insert really beautiful artistic picture of Angelina lovingly nursing. Except I have no beautiful artistic photos.<



*One day my pump made weird noises. So I called Ameda Customer Service, who immediately said they'd send me a new pump, no questions asked. Alas it was late in the day, and though they'd overnight it, it wouldn't go out til the next day, in the end leaving me three days with no pump. WIC lent me one of theirs and it was excellent. And thanks to Ameda's excellent Customer Service, I got my new pump.