My son is allergic to casein. The only baby food milk that did not completely screw him up was breast milk but he still had problems with it. We tried formulas when he had problems latching on. That was a hot mess. I ended up using a shield or pumping the entire time. At 3 months his appetite outgrew my production and we had to start adding completely to solids. By 6 months he was completely on solids. The docs just about drove me nuts.Reportedly allergic to milk, I was fed Gerber's meat based formula. My big brother said it looked like diarrhea in a bottle. I had apple juice on my cereal when I was older, and drank beer and fruit punch and apple juice. My teeth are shot now.
Took chewable calcium pills from the time I can remember, so at least they tried to do something right.
The shortages are also raising fears that parents might be tempted to concoct their own formulas or water down current store-bought formulas to stretch supplies, two actions experts say are fraught with danger.
The FDA strongly urges parents not to make their own formulas, saying contamination and inadequate nutrients in home-brewed formulas can lead to everything from "severe nutritional imbalances to food-borne illnesses, both of which can be life-threatening."
"Making things at home off of a Google recipe is potentially very dangerous for your baby," Dr. Stephen Lauer, a pediatrician with the University of Kansas Health System, told WDAF TV station this week.
Meanwhile, parents are desperately pleading for help on social media.
"If the MSM can talk about the toilet paper shortage ever hour, they should be talking about the baby formula shortage at least. ...We ended finding the Amazon brand online but not everyone is so lucky to be able to feed that. Please share. This is every store!" Danielle Miller tweeted with a picture of an empty shelve of formula.
Joe Biden promised competence by a bigger, better government
“We’re from the Government and we’re here to help you”With government, bigger is never better.
Back in the day, nursing women were encouraged to add beer to their diet. The extra fluid and calories increased production, and the alcohol relaxed the mother, thus ramping up the flow rate. Plus which, beer is loaded with B vitamins.
Everybody wins.
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I could not nurse. I know many who could not at all (like me) or who did not have enough milk so had to supplement with formula. I have been shamed numerous times because I "didn't nurse" by the holier than thou who could. DON'T DO THAT.
That's rich. I was lucky enough to be fed on karo syrup and raw cows milk. My kids were breast fed till they were 6 months old and because all my kids got teeth at 3 months old were transitioned to , oh my god, whole milk. I wouldn't feed formula to my kids. Ever see the ingredients in baby formula?Yes there are some who have milk allergies but A2 milk (jersey, Guernsey, goat) are generally a success in alleviating that allergy. Several family members and most of our customers have bought our milk for that reason.Biden’s bread line crisis? Anatomy of the American baby formula shortage
A president who promised competence was caught flat footed by agency failure, supply chain woes and inflation, and baby parents are now in a panic.justthenews.com
Biden’s bread line crisis? Anatomy of the American baby formula shortage
A president who promised competence was caught flat footed by agency failure, supply chain woes and inflation, and baby parents are now in a panic.
By John Solomon
Updated: May 7, 2022 - 11:37pm
Rep. Rose DeLauro, D-Conn., a reliable liberal ally, unveiled documents showing the Biden Food and Drug Administration was alerted by a whistleblower last fall about potential contamination issues at the Abbott Nutrition baby formula factory in Michigan and failed for months to act aggressively.
- At the outset of his presidency, Joe Biden promised competence by a bigger, better government. A few days ago, one of his loyal allies exposed a gross incompetence by federal officials on Biden’s watch that defied that promise and inflamed a baby formula shortage now panicking parents nationwide.
“The FDA reacted far too slowly to this report,” DeLauro said in releasing a letter to the Health and Human Services inspector general demanding an immediate investigation to an incident that has led to babies being sickened and dying and a belated recall that has emptied shelves of formula nationwide.
DeLauro_OIG Request Infant Formula Recall.pdf
The congresswoman, the chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, laid out a four-month-long trail of federal bumbles and stumbles: the report came in Oct. 20, the whistleblower didn’t even get interviewed for two months, the plant didn’t get inspected until Jan. 31 and the recall didn’t get issued until Feb. 17.
“Why did the FDA not spring into action?” she implored during a congressional hearing. “Why did it take four months to pull this formula off store shelves? How many infants were fed contaminated formula during this time, by parents who trusted that the formula they were buying was safe? How many additional illnesses and deaths were there due to FDA’s slow response?”
Now the bureaucratic stumbling has escalated into a national crisis, as video of bare shelves and panicked parents harken in America some of the same fears and images as the bread lines and rationing that befell the Soviet Union in the early 1990s just before its collapse.
The problems began even before the recall as inflation, labor shortages and supply chain slowdowns began putting pressure on the baby food staple last fall.
In November, baby formula was already substantially more expensive and supply shortages had already risen to 11%. By the first week of April, the shortages had soared to 31%, and last week the number stood at a stunning 40%, according to statistics kept by Datasembly.
The escalating shortages have prompted major stores such as Target, CVS and Walgreens to ration supplies with purchase limits.
"This is a shocking number that you don't see for other categories," Datasembly CEO Ben Reich told CBS MoneyWatch on Friday.
The crisis has both political and personal consequences.
Many millennial and Gen Z child-bearing parents were part of the coalition that propelled Biden to his election win. And some parents are now facing life-and-death consequences, especially for children with rare digestive disorders.
"If this doesn’t get fixed soon, I don’t know how my son will survive," Phoebe Carter, whose 5-year-old son suffers from a rare digestive and immune system disease, told Politico on Saturday. "I just can’t stress that enough."
The poor and working class – whom Biden promised hope in his inaugural speech – are also disproportionately affected. A food bank in Seattle was so desperate to get some baby formula it recently held an emergency drive.
Alfredo Ortiz, president of the small business group Job Creators Network, said the baby formula crisis follows a pattern of other economic failures by the Biden administration.
“The only thing the Biden administration seems to be efficient at is burying their heads in the sand,” he said. “These are the same bureaucrats that told us for months that inflation was only transitory and would resolve itself. Then they tried to tell small business owners that their supply chain issues had been resolved even though we could all see cargo ships backed up for miles at several ports nationwide.
”Unfortunately, it comes as no surprise that they have failed to protect even the most innocent Americans from their incompetence,” he added.
The shortages are also raising fears that parents might be tempted to concoct their own formulas or water down current store-bought formulas to stretch supplies, two actions experts say are fraught with danger.
The FDA strongly urges parents not to make their own formulas, saying contamination and inadequate nutrients in home-brewed formulas can lead to everything from "severe nutritional imbalances to food-borne illnesses, both of which can be life-threatening."
"Making things at home off of a Google recipe is potentially very dangerous for your baby," Dr. Stephen Lauer, a pediatrician with the University of Kansas Health System, told WDAF TV station this week.
Meanwhile, parents are desperately pleading for help on social media.
"If the MSM can talk about the toilet paper shortage ever hour, they should be talking about the baby formula shortage at least. ...We ended finding the Amazon brand online but not everyone is so lucky to be able to feed that. Please share. This is every store!" Danielle Miller tweeted with a picture of an empty shelve of formula.
Absolutely true. I find it incredibly uneducated or uninformed that people shame for that. I know plenty of people who couldn't breastfeed. My huge beef is with formula I feel it is incredibly unhealthy there are artificial sweeteners in many formulas just to mention 1 of the ingredients. There are necessary vitamins and minerals but that can be attained through vitamin drops. The rest of the Ingredients besides the milk powder (yuck) is absolute crap as far as I'm concerned. If I couldn't have breastfed I absolutely would have used milk and karo syrup over commercial formula.i understand that this topic gets very heated at times.
but i will again state that this thread is not about the arguments for or against, or shaming either way, or anything like that. i can start a different thread for that if everyone wants to have that discussion. let me know.
i really want to offer solutions to this problem that is very current and right now, however those solutions arise.
some problems need both immediate and long term solutions, both. this is one of them.
hunybeeso in addition to trying to find solutions to the formula problem immediately, lets also try to acquire the items and teach people now how to increase the success of breastfeeding.
there are things that can really help a new mother (or a mother that is having trouble with another kids) to make breastfeeding easier.
sadly, so many of the things that can help are poo poo'd and looked down on by many.
there are accoutrements, items, foods, herbs, information, etc that people are simple not told of. they have no idea how to solve a problem, and so many times, the problem can easily be solved, but there is no working towards that.
if i wasn't so damned stubborn and never give up, my kids would have ended up on formula. the reason? because the MEDICAL people and the lactation consultants were absolutely worthless.
and yes, i said lactations consultants. they were worthless.
what i found is that there really isn't a solid standard that is followed.
if your area does not have a good one, you are out of luck. i knew more than the consultants around here, and i had to teach them! and so many of them just give up. if it isn't and easy fix...oh well....
on the flip side, some just hammer mothers that are having trouble and blame them.
neither of these are good, nor helpful.
another thing lacking in many (not all), is a lack of patience. lack of patients by the medical and lactation people. some are wonderful, and sadly many or not.
again, if it isn't picked up on right away or if there are any problems that are unforeseen, they just get frustrated and thats the end.
i lost count how many times a lactation consultant was was too pure and would not "allow" the mother to use anything to get the baby to nurse if it wasn't simply her breast only! they would then turn them away.
inverted nipples? they either didn't know about it and couldn't help, or they just said you had to work it out with the baby.
no instructions.
how is that informational and helpful?
i say use what you have to to get the job done.
let us also then get the things and give them to the mothers that want to nurse that can help them.
I must say something.because the MEDICAL people and the lactation consultants were absolutely worthless.
I must say something.
My very dearest friend in the world, a woman older than I, just retired from lactation consulting after multiple decades. She was absolutely the opposite of what you, and several other people here have had experience with. I have also known other lactation consultants who were extremely helpful to mothers and had a very high success rate. Not all lactation consultants are the same, and you really shouldn't spread that information around. There are some terrible ones, and guess what? MOST of them are La Leche League based or trained; that was both her experience over the years, and mine when I worked newborn nursery almost 50 years ago. There are some very successful ones, and those women are treasured by parents and good doctors alike. Many of good consultants now choose to work with midwives as opposed to hospital settings.
Hunybee, when one says 'lactation consultants are worthless', or 'hospice care is terrible and all they want to do is hasten a death', that might seem true for the person saying it, but it's not a universal experience. YET, many, many people will read that, or hear that, and will dismiss - out of hand - services that could greatly help them. Without checking anything out, or even giving someone a chance. AND, when someone goes in with a poor attitude, "They are worthless, this won't help me", the chances are pretty good their experience will be less than optimal. This has been my experience over a long time.I did not say there a were all bad.
There ARE some good ones. There are some excellent ones. This is not what everyone gets though. Just like drs and nurses. There are good and there are bad.
What information should I not "spread around"? That there are some bad ones? There are.
The part you quoted was talking about me in my area. It is a big area too. There are a few good ones around here, but nowhere close.
People do not know if they are le leches or not. Many hospitals use those lactation consultants.
Me saying there are bad ones does not mean there are not good ones. The good ones around here are like unicorns.
Hunybee, when one says 'lactation consultants are worthless', or 'hospice care is terrible and all they want to do is hasten a death', that might seem true for the person saying it, but it's not a universal experience. YET, many, many people will read that, or hear that, and will dismiss - out of hand - services that could greatly help them. Without checking anything out, or even giving someone a chance. AND, when someone goes in with a poor attitude, "They are worthless, this won't help me", the chances are pretty good their experience will be less than optimal. This has been my experience over a long time.
They are being stolen by the secret government for their on use.Mothers find barren shelves as they search for baby formula
Mothers across the country are struggling to feed their babies amid a nationwide shortage of baby formula following supply-chain issues and a national recall after bacteria was found.www.dailymail.co.uk
'I can't feed my son': Desperate parents cannot get hold of baby formula amid a national shortage as stores ration cans that are selling on eBay for up to $800 after infection killed baby and caused huge recall
- Mothers across the country are struggling to feed their babies amid a nationwide shortage of baby formula
- In the week ending April 24, 40 to 50 percent of the top-selling baby formula products were out of stock at stores across the country
- The national out-of-stock levels jumped nine percentage points from 31 percent to 40 percent between April 3 and April 24
- That is up 11 percent from last November, with the average cost of infant formula jumping more than 18 percent over the past year
- The shortage comes amid COVID-related supply-chain issues and a national recall after a bacteria was found at a Michigan plant
- Producers say they they are now trying to ramp up production
- In the meantime, mothers should not try to dilute the formula, make their own or substitute it with cow's milk
Desperate parents across the United States are struggling to get their hands on baby formula amid a nationwide shortage as major national retailers have enforced rationing and one website charged up to $800 for the precious tins following a recall on popular products after an infant died of an infection.
In the week ending April 24, CBS News reports, 40 to 50 percent of the top-selling baby formula products were out of stock at stores across the country, according to an analysis from Datasembly, which tracked baby formula stock at more than 11,000 retailers.
National out-of-stock levels jumped nine percentage points from 31 percent to 40 percent between April 3 and April 24, according to an analysis from Datasembly.
'An entire month [there] was nothing... nothing online, nothing in stores nearby,' Nicole Brown, the mother of a 5-month-old told News 4 Jacksonville in Florida.
'I can get Amazon delivered to my door, but I can't feed my son. It's absolutely heartbreaking.'
And in Virginia, Jill Bradford, a foster mom to a 5-month-old baby girl with medical needs, says she has less than two days of the special amino acid-based formula the baby needs.
'We've called the WIC office,' Bradford told WTVR. 'We've called Thrive, which is a supply company. We've called every hospital system in the state. I've contacted personally, every Kroger, Walgreens, Walmart and CVS within the tri-cities area.'
She noted she found eight cans of the formula the child needs on eBay, but it's being sold for $800. The cans typically cost between $43 and $47.
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK : Mothers are struggling to get their babies formula as 40 to 50 percent of the top-selling baby formula products were out of stock at retails across the country for the week ending April 24
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MASSACHUSETTS: National out-of-stock levels, meanwhile, jumped nine percentage points from 31 percent to 40 percent between April 3 and April 24
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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: The shelves were mostly barren of baby formula back in January
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JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: Ashleigh Olsen said she is struggling to feed her 9-month-old son who is limited to a specific formula she orders straight from the manufacturer
The shortage began during the COVID-19 pandemic, experts say, when companies started to face supply-chain issues, including procuring the necessary ingredients, packaging hang-ups and labor shortages.
It only got worse in February, when Abbott Labs first announced a recall of certain Alimentum, Similac and EleCare formulas after five infants who used the formula contracted a Cronobacter sakazakii infection, which can cause severe blood infections and meningitis. One of the infants died as a result.
Among the hardest-hit areas, according to Datasembly, were Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas - where the out-of-stock rate in the capitol of San Antonio was 56 percent.
National retailers like Walgreens and CVS are now limiting customers to just three baby formula products per purchase, and at Target.com consumers can only buy up to four pieces of a given baby formula product at a time - leaving parents scrambling as nearly three-quarters of babies in the United States are on formula for their first six months.
The situation is even worse for those whose children are put on a specific formula either because they have allergies or due to their nutritional needs.
Ashleigh Olsen, also of Jacksonville, Florida, said her 9-month-old is limited to a specific formula she orders straight from the manufacturer as her son could face an allergic reaction to others. But there is no word on when it will be available again.
'Luckily I stocked up last time. So today when I opened my last can, that kind of lit my fire a little bit,' Olsen said.
And in the midwest, Kassidi Hillard, who has a 2-month-old who needs Similac Pro-Advance, told WDRB she has 'looked at every store in Indiana and here (in Kentucky) and haven't found her formula at not one store.
'It's kind of stressful, cause if you can't find formula, it's like they can't eat nothing else,' Hillard said. 'They can't have baby food, they can't have hard food, they can't have what we eat so it's really, it's not an easy thing to go through.'
In Texas, Emily Pyeatt, 22, wrote on Facebook that she recently went to eight stores in search of formula for her 8-month-old.
'This is the scariest thing I've ever experienced,' she wrote on March 30. 'How are we supposed to feed our children when there's NO FORMULA ON THE SHELVES?'
She later told the Washington Post that as she was down to her last three cans, she has been easing her son onto more solid foods, as she does not produce enough milk to breastfeed.
'It was a very heartbreaking decision to stop, and I think it's upsetting for someone to say that,' Pyeatt said, adding: 'I pray for the women who have babies who are not old enough for solid food.'
Danielle Arzola, 27, also of Texas, told the Post that when she tried to switch formula brands, her 6-month-old got sick, and she now has to drive all over town to find the brand she needs. She has even resorted to buying formula from people in other states.
But the situation is dire everywhere, with one Michigan mom, who was not identified, also told FOX Business that she has been having trouble finding formula for her daughter, who lost a lot of weight following her birth.
'When we ran to the local Target to one day get some just days after she was born, the shelves were completely empty.
'My heart literally sank,' she said, noting: 'Luckily, she doesn't need any special formula, and I was able to order online, but not everyone has been as lucky.
'Our neighbor said her family member can't find the sensitive type of formula for their newborn who has stomach issues anywhere.
'They're in a panic daily not knowing if they'll be able to feed their newborn tomorrow or the day after - my heart breaks for those parents.'
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INDIANA: Some national retailers are now limiting how much baby formula each customer can buy at one time
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KENTUCKY: Parents have had to search multiple stores for the formulas they need
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VIRGINIA: The situation is even more dire for infants who require a special kind of formula
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Emily Pyeatt, of Texas, wrote in March that she went to eight stores and cannot find her child's formula, calling it 'the scariest thing I've ever experienced'
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On eBay, one can of Enfamil Gentlease Infant Formula for Fussiness, Gas, and Crying was selling for more than $40
The company announced in March it has not found any Cronobacter sakazakii in any samples of the formula it sends out, and conducts tests on a regular basis.
But it did say it found evidence of the bacteria in a 'non-product contact area' at its Sturgis, Michigan plant.
Now, baby formula producers are working to once again ramp up production.
'W3e know that this recall has further exacerbated an industry-wide instant formula supply shortage,' Abbott Labs told the Washington Post in a statement.
'We are doing everything we can to address it,' the company said, including ramping up production of Similac, air-freighting in products from Europe and working with health care providers to identify alternative formulas.
Enfamil, meanwhile, told News 4 Jacksonville: 'At Enfamil, we are dedicated to giving the millions of babies and toddlers that rely on our formulas the best start in life.
'We are aware that some parents are having trouble finding their favorite baby formula products in their preferred store,' the company said, noting: 'We have been optimizing our efforts to address any issues as fast as possible, and meet the needs of all babies who rely on our formula.'
The Food and Drug Administration also told News 4 Jacksonville that it has met with several infant formula manufacturers on a weekly basis 'to try to increase capacity to produce specialty and metabolic products overall.'
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The Food and Drug Administration also told News 4 Jacksonville that it has met with several infant formula manufacturers on a weekly basis 'to try to increase capacity to produce specialty and metabolic products overall.'
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National out-of-stock levels for baby formula jumped nine percentage points - from 31 percent to 40 percent - between April 3 and April 24, according to an analysis from Datasembly
In the meantime, experts say, parents should not dilute their baby's formula, try to make their own formula at home or try to replace it with cow's milk.
Doing so is 'not nutritionally comparable with breast milk or infant formula,' according to Brian Dittmeier, senior director of public policy at the National WIC Association, and could cause nutrient deficiencies that can have a 'profound impact on an infant's growth and development.'
He said any parents who are struggling to find formula can contact their local WIC agencies and food banks for help locating some in their communities.
The Infant Nutrition Council of America is also encouraging parents to keep a 10-day to two week supply of formula at home - but is urging them not to stockpile products as the shortage continues - and experts say there is no end in sight.
there is video at the site. please go watch.