During that time, people believed it was very important that the kid not imprint on anyone else, so instead of letting them breastfeed with whatever lactating woman was in the vicinity, they would feed the kid sugar water.

My first baby lost an alarming amount of weight because my colostrum and early milk wasn't nutritious enough for her (and despite a poster in my hospital room assuring me that it was good enough for the baby, which I'm still bitter about), at which point the doctor put her on formula for a couple of weeks. At which point I had more than enough milk, but I remember talking to my sister (a pediatrician) at the time being bitter about how I couldn't feed my own child and wondering how this worked before formula, at which point my sister was like, "Yeah, they died a lot, is what happened."

All that is to say that this just kind of viscerally upset me, like, you've probably got some sort of lactating woman around, including the own mom (which also! ouch! not breastfeeding when your breasts are totally primed for it is also painful and also I wonder how many of these women died from mastitis) and you're feeding this kid sugar water?? Poor kids :(