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Joe, as you indicate, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Some races are lactose intolerant from a very early age and Asians and many American Indians are lactose intolerant from birth, and should not drink cow's milk at all. . . and every pregnancy is different. As for formula, it is not unusual to have to try several before the infant finds one that it will tolerate well.

I don't know how long ago your anecdotal experiences were from, but most instances of such spitting up come about from ingesting too much air from bottle feeding. This problem was solved for the most part in the 1970s with the invention of the plastic baggie type "bottle" which contracted as the baby suckled the bottle and did not allow aeration of the furmulas so they did not get the gas that was so associated with burping and spitting the formula up.

What I found amazing was the number of women who had nothing but time on their hands who preferred to bottle feed their babies with VERY expensive formula instead of using what nature and God has provided in a convenient always with them means that is free and better for their babies. A week's supply of infant formula 20 years ago was $30-$40 added to a similar cost for throw away diapers. These women and girls were on fixed incomes of under $500 a month (with rent of about the same) and WIC would run out after six months of the year. No one was donating formula to the Food Banks, and you could not distribute out-dated formula. . . as soon as the sell-by date passed, even though it was still perfectly good, by Federal law it had to be destroyed.

Actually, it spans a couple of generations. Babies were well burped, if that's what you mean, and most started something other than breast milk (teeth!) and formula before they were 6 months old (pre-chewed or mashed up real food). Some took to cows milk, others did not, but all reached a point where milk or formula did not satisfy them, even breast milk.

These kids were often walking by 9 months...some even before they could crawl.

One of the reasons people are on WIC is that they do not handle money or financial decisions well. That is a learned concept, and not all have been exposed to people who have learned it.

Others involve job loss, marital dissolution, and to some extent an aggressive Social Services cadre looking to increase their caseload (and funding).

As indicated, this is anecdotal, and by no means a study (the sample is too small and limited). I was wondering if others had seen something similar.