First time Grandpa here, love my little guy but have been wondering how do you prep for a baby? Specifically formula, my Grand son uses soy formula. Does anyone have advice?
Their baby, their choice of feeding. You raised your kids, made your share of mistakes and good decisions. Now it is their turn.
Grandbabies are for fun. Joy to you, grandpa.
This information is for my daughter. She is the one thinking of her baby as they prep.
But the plan if Stuff hits the fan is we will all be together at a undisclosed place so I will prep for my grandson as well.
Easy. Have her stockpile supplies and rotate stock like she would her and the rest of her household's prep supplies.
It would be a bad idea for you to try because you cant readily rotate perishables. Have her stock and rotate, and if the SHTF she grabs her stockpile and comes to you.
My daughter is on alumentum premixed formula. We treat it like any other perishable I'll buy her 7 bottles for the week and at the end of the week I spend anything leftover in the kids consumables (formula food diapers pull ups etc.) budget on more formula. Then I rotate out. Still doesn't completely solve our problems since we don't know how her belly will handle milk proteins in the future but it does give us a buffer period.
Powdered milk might be the only thing you can prep that would have a long shelf life and not need to be rotated. As for her, the normal food storage and rotation plan should work. If you can veggies and fruits, you could always make a set that is basically mush for the baby in small half pint jars
I have been a grandfather less than a year. I was just told by my daughter my house needed baby proofing. so...yea. Bubble wrap.
As for prepping for a baby. They are not babies long. You will more than likely make it through that early stage rather quickly to more solid foods(my granddaughter is less than a year old and eats plenty of solid foods already).
Some cloth diapers...maybe? My daughter has them for emergency use(heaves a little).
Food you eat,but also a way to chop it. My daughter uses one of these already for a few baby food things she makes. Amazon product ASIN B007TFNSLC
A super secret grandpa only knows about it candy supply. Because...well your a grandpa(and toddlers like candy lol). Do not give babies candy though,we are grandpa's not idiots.
Clothing. This is a large one. SHTF and your little baby does not have larger size clothing available, it will quickly become an issue. Things like coats and shoes especially. We(my daughter and I) did consider this and hit plenty of garage sales(the type of ones I would normally avoid) for baby and toddler clothing this summer. Goodwill and places like it are also a good budget friendly option for clothing/shoes you hope to never need. Babies grow fast,I had forgotten just how fast.
Children's books. Sad to say it but so much is done by parents online these days fewer and fewer children's books are even around. Goodwill has been a good place to find plenty though(clean everything you get there please). A few toys. A nice high quality stuffed animal(not a cheap one,my daughter at 25 still has her stuffed purple hippo from when she was 5).
Food,clothing,education, a bit of entertainment, and a comfort item they can hold.
Evaporated milk, a 50lb bag of sugar, and poly vi sol vitamin drops.
I know it isn't the soy formula that he may need for specific health reasons, but evaporated milk will stay good in cans for years and can be used for many other things if he grows out of formula before anything goes wrong. They're pretty cheap if you buy a store brand at 1.32 or something like that per can.
Sugar obviously also has many uses and will stay fine so long as it isn't wet or exposed to vermin.
Poly-vi-sol is a liquid vitamin that can be added once a week or so to cover all the bases he isn't getting from the milk.
You can find recipes or ratios pretty much anywhere as this has been used for as long as they've been canning evaporated milk for emergency baby food. Learn how and when to use your vitamins as too much is almost worse than not enough. A couple bottles should last a significant amount of time. $50 at walmart will get you fairly well into at least a month or so of food and please remember not to take all the vitamins off the shelf at once, other people have need of them too and people get tested when kids are involved.
There's a lot of good suggestions in the thread already for other things, but I ran into this problem when the formula shortage hit and had to make something work. I still keep a flat of evap milk in the pantry if anything was to go terribly awry. Good luck prepping!