Two years after solving Jordan’s formula issue, we found ourselves in a similar situation with Jonathan. While his nighttime sleep got rough at four months, it started going downhill fast at 5-1/2 months – waking up every 45 minutes one night, all night long. And then, his daytime naps suddenly tanked.

I had a feeling my milk supply was drying up again but, until that point, he refused a bottle. I tried four different brands, nipple flow speeds, and milk temperatures. No luck. And then a girlfriend shared a piece of advice: if your baby refuses a bottle but takes a pacifier, try the same bottle brand as the pacifier he prefers.

After the third day in a row of waking up every ten minutes during every nap (and every hour all night), I tried one more brand of bottle an hour after breastfeeding him. He didn’t just take it – he guzzled it. And then he went straight to sleep and didn’t make a peep for two hours.

I had spent weeks trying to help him sleep with different schedules, introducing solids, stopping solids, swaddling, not swaddling, you name it, I tried it. I had so many people telling me to just sleep train, but my gut told me that wasn’t the problem. But I knew, deep down in my gut, the poor guy was just hungry.

After Jordan’s formula experience, I decided not even to chance it and went straight to the goat milk formula. But this time, I made my own at home with a recipe that my sister used with both her boys. I did the math to compare the homemade formula with pre-made, and it ended up being a fraction of the cost! The boxed formula worked out to about $2 per bottle, and the homemade recipe was only $0.44 a bottle! Even better? I knew exactly what went into it and, by extension, into him.

Jonathan was a year old when we switched pediatricians for insurance purposes and she was skeptical when I first told her about our homemade formula. Skeptical enough that she ran some blood tests to check his levels – she thought he would for sure be anemic at the very least. But his levels were all completely normal, and I walked out of there like this: 😏

diy goat milk formula recipe:

Ingredients – click each for shopping links
32 oz. filtered water
4 level scoops full fat Meyenberg Goat Milk Powder (base for protein, fats, carbs, vitamins, and minerals)
1 tsp. Great Lakes Gelatin Powder (helps digestion, builds/seals gut)
4 Tbs. raw, organic turbinado sugar or real maple syrup (carbohydrate)
1 tsp. unsulphured organic blackstrap molasses (B vitamins, iron, helps move bowels)
2 tsp. olive or avocado oil (healthy monounsaturated fat)
2 tsp. coconut oil (healthy saturated fat)
2 tsp. nutritional yeast (B12 + folate and all those other amazing vitamins)

In 1 bottle per day
1/4 tsp. powdered probiotics (healthy gut flora, immunity)
6 drops Vitamin D (400 IU/dy.) or 1/4th tsp. fermented cod liver oil (Vitamin D)
1/4 tsp. baby vitamin drops if not nursing