Here’s what I wish someone had told me about formula-feeding: Formula-fed babies often sleep longer, because it’s easier to regulate how much food they’re getting. Formula-feeding mothers also sleep longer, because their babies go longer between feedings, and because night feedings can be shared between caregivers — my sainted husband, bless him, eagerly stepped up to those night feedings, and bonded fast and hard with our baby through them. Formula allows mothers dramatically greater liberty in the first year of a child’s life, because you can be gone for more than two hours without being tethered to baby or pump. I had my first overnight getaway with friends when my son was two months old: a freedom unthinkable to many of my nursing friends for three or four times as long. Formula allowed me to enjoy the occasional buzz without fear of poisoning my baby. It allowed me to return to work, to put my child in daycare, and to share the snuggle-high of a suckling newborn with his father, grandparents, daycare provider, and anyone else within arm’s reach when I needed to poop. As it turned out, none of those were insignificant factors in my mental and physical health.