07/17/2022
By Kate Stone Lombardi
You know how dozens of news headlines pass before your eyes every day, and you get overwhelmed? And how you are saturated with emotion over the war in Ukraine and the constant mass shootings in this country and the January 6 hearings and how close our Democracy was – and maybe still is – to collapsing? And how because of all this, you sometimes skip other important stories because – well, you can only take so much?
Well, such was the case with the Baby Formula Shortage. I knew about it. It sounded terrible. But I didn’t spend much time on it.
Until, that is, my granddaughter needed some. My daughter has been nursing her 9-month-old, but now the baby needs supplemental formula. To make matters more challenging, the little one has allergies to milk and soy and cannot drink regular formula.
My poor daughter was so stressed that I told her I would go on the hunt for the formula. Of course I was cocky – in my family, I’m known as “The Border Collie” – I can round anything up.
Holy Cow! First, there is nothing available online. At best, you can get on an email list for the manufacturer to notify you when supplies again become available.
Next, I started visiting pharmacies and grocery stores that sell formula. It was like looking for Clorox wipes or Lysol during the first year of Covid. Picked over or empty shelves. Some stores just had cards in the baby food aisle, which you presented to the person at check out. The formula was kept behind the cash register, with the cigarettes and lottery cards. Except they didn’t have any. Other places kept what little formula was available under lock and key. And NONE of them had formula for babies with allergies.
I finally lucked out at Target, where I found a can of the powdered, generic version. And at that store, like every other one I visited, the formula was rationed, with only two or three (depending on the store) bottles or cans per customer.
I know I’m incredibly late to this shortage, and that parents across the country have been suffering.
I’d ask “What’s next?” but I truly don’t want to know the answer to that question.