If artificial feeding must be resorted to, the composition should resemble mother’s milk as nearly as possible. It is impossible to duplicate it exactly and even though the elements and the proportion of them are the same, the bacterial flora will be different and consequently the effect also.
If the breasts are emptied regularly, human milk varies little in composition after the first few weeks. According to Holt there is an average in mother’s milk of
| Fat | 4% |
| Sugar | 7% |
| Protein | 1.5% |
| Salt | 0.2% |
| Water | 87.3% |
Adaptation of Cow’s Milk
When the baby has been fed at the breast for several months, pure cow’s milk sometimes agrees very well, if overfeeding is avoided.
The amount of milk taken every twenty-four hours by a healthy infant is usually about 11/4 ounces to the pound of the baby’s weight.
A normal infant of twelve pounds would be taking between twelve and eighteen ounces of milk in its twenty-four hour mixture.
Budin recommends one-tenth of the body-weight daily of milk and reports excellent results in infants after the fifth or sixth month, weighing from thirteen to fifteen pounds.
Most infants under the age of nine months are more or less incapable of digesting cow’s milk undiluted. If artificial food is resorted to from the start, practically all physicians agree that the milk should be diluted or otherwise modified during the first few months at least.
Milk diluted with water is often given, one part of milk to two parts of water. This reduces the protein to about the amount found in breast milk.