Good point - if they already expecting complication it would unwise to expect that breast feeding would be an automatic.

They may well have thought they had a little more time


Jack

 

I noticed this too. I am sure they just needed a reason for Daryl to get out on the road...maybe to be seen by Merle??? But I was thinking eight months on the road in the winter and all the houses they must have stopped at, not to mention tiny general type stores and no one thought to grab some cans of formula or powedered milk or something??? Seemed odd to me.

 

In defense of the group, the walker herds forced them to travel in a circle over the winter, so they had to travel light and focus on immediate essentials like clothing and food, instead of future essentials, like diapers and formula.

 

according to the preview....if Daryl is taking his motorcycle out to get the formula.....isn't he gonna need a car instead? he's gonna need diapers and formula.....how's he gonna haul all that stuff on his bike?

 

Travel light? with 2 pickups and a suburban, a hyundai, etc? I think they could have carried a few more things around if they wanted to. The only reason NOT to pick up formula is that they didn't find any. Powdered milk they would have drank themselves, they were on the verge of eating dog food.

 

They were starving so bad that pet food was part of their diet. If they had formula, they drank it to stay alive.

 

What planning? Have you seen the episode 1? Before they found the prison, they were lucky just being alive, they have no time for planning anything.

 

It's semi understandable. You can make a diaper out of random cloth and that's probably the better solution for a group who had no real "home" or anywhere to store a childhoods worth of diapers let alone a months worth. Newborns go through nearly 10 diapers per day so disposable is a temporary solution. Formula wouldn't be needed if Lori were still alive which they were planning on. Formula is kind of specialized too not every house is going to have it and it would need to be unopened plus the amount needed to be considered prepared is pretty high. They'd need ~750 oz of liquid formula every month could be up to 1,000 but say they tell her to shut up and go with a lower # so that's about 125oz of powder per month (or about 10 small of the regular sized containers) x that by 6 at the minimum (you want closer to a year) is nearly 50lbs of formula they would need to find and don't forget the purified water needed when they couldn't even find anything better than no-meat owl. Plus if they had formula they wouldn't need to starve themselves because it has vitamins and lots of calories. Lori dying is a worse case scenario something you wouldn't starve yourself over.

 

saddle bags...oh yeah!

 

They don't need diapers. They can fashion those out of towels or prison uniforms, or any sort of material... Or just not have them at all... Some parents raise their kids without diapers...

But I think it's entirely possible that they just didn't ever find themselves in the right place to get and store formula. They thought Lori would have breast milk, and even though they should have planned for her likely death, it's probably easier said than done... Can you imagine if Lori or someone was picking up baby formula, and Rick would be like "why are you doing that?" and they tell him "just in case Lori dies..." He'd probably go nuts and tell them to stop it, just like when Carl was opening that can of dog food and Rick took it away from him and threw a fit. He doesn't want to think about things going wrong or having to resort to unfavourable options.

Maybe Rick will plan better for failure now that he sees firsthand how likely it is...

 

They didnt have enough time. They figured Lori would breastfeed and had to worry about how they would keep each other alive. Dont tell me you've never gone to do laundry and forget to buy quarters?

 

I don't believe the group divided items according to their vehicles, getting seperated must've been a concern. It also wouldn't surprise me if during their nomadic winter, they spent a few nights sleeping in their vehicles.

 

Considering everything going on in the world, you would think they would have encountered/grabbed more formula as a just in case scenario. They had to know medicine would probably be limited and their would be risks with the pregnancy. Sometimes I wonder if they really all work for FEMA and is the reason why they can't plan ahead for the life of them (see gas, ammo, food, newer cars...)

 

My point was with a couple of pickups and a suburban if they found a couple cases of baby formula they would have grabbed it and thrown it in back. They aren't that pressed for space like they would be if all they had were motorcycles.

Since everyone here goes ape when "realism" is brought up I notably did NOT mention that they could have taken another mobile home instead of one of those gashog pickups and given themselves a place to sleep in relative safety (if you covered the windows, zombies wouldn't know you were there) and if you ripped out some of the cabinets and made a loft everyone could have slept in it, warming it up a bit in the cold months. That would have been more comfortable than several people sleeping in the cab of each pickup.

 

Yes, bit of any oversight on their part - however don't think they had expected Lori to die so she would have been supplying breast milk as let's be honest, Doctor's opinions vary but are that breast feeding should be up until 1 year (some say more bizarrely) but giving formula in the first weeks of life is not ideal if you have breast milk. But then again in this society, with poor diet they would probably need to supplement the breast milk anyway. I think they were just relying on Lori to stay alive.

The biggest part of the poor planning in all this is that they lock about 20 gates on one side of the prison yet there is only 1 gate with a padlock on the side nearest the cell block where they live. Er, pretty weak defences for sure as we just saw, as soon as that 'main gate' was open they were screwed.

 

The positives of a mobile home
1. Secure place to sleep.
2. Room to do things (like say clean weapons) while on the move.
3. Secure place to shower, shit, piss and wash up.
4. More space to store things.
Negatives
1. Way more of a gas hog than the vehicle they were using.
2. Zero off road capacity
3. Massive and hard to get through road blockages (crashes, collapses, ext)
4. Obvious target
5. Most are gasoline engines.
IMO NOT worth getting one. Did I mention the abysmal gas mileage in a world where gas will be going bad?

 

Expecting a woman who has successfully given birth to live through her second delivery isn't that dumb. Compared to failing to set up twice-daily patrols of their area and make sure their space was completely secure, it's Nobel material.

 

Carl was delivered by c-section. In a hospital, by a professional staff familiar with such births. Her second delivery had none of those things. You forget we are back in a position where childbirth will once again be a dangerous proposition, particularly for women who can't deliver vaginally. Even if Hershel had done the delivery there would be no guarantees.

 

Had they specified that Carl was born by C-section? If so, risking Hershel in the clearing operation was even more stupid than I thought. V-backs (that is, giving birth vaginally after having given birth via Cesarean section) are considered risky, even with current levels of medical care.

If that was the case, Lori really should have swallowed all that Plan B. But her lack of common sense (or any other sort) is more than adequately covered elsewhere in this forum.