Kymuana Lumpkins had never thought much about buying baby formula because she’d always planned to breastfeed.
But in December, despite being vaccinated against the coronavirus, Lumpkins, her husband and their five-month-old daughter, Rosabella, came down with COVID-19. Lumpkins said Roseabella wasn’t nursing as much.
“One week she was one size,” Lumpkins said, “and then we noticed that she had lost a lot of weight just within a couple of weeks because she didn’t want to eat.”
Their pediatrician prescribed Enfamil NeuroPro, a high-calorie powdered formula known as EnfaCare. But when Lumpkins’ husband, Emir Roberson, tried to find EnfaCare, it proved nearly impossible.
Rhode Island is among the states hardest hit by the nationwide infant formula shortage. And it’s particularly hard on low-income families like the Lumpkinses who have babies with special dietary needs.
Lumpkins, 38, is a customer service representative who works from home. Roberson, 34, quit his job to be a full-time dad. The couple live in Woonsocket and don’t have a car. So a neighbor drove Roberson to search area stores for the special high-calorie formula.
“I tried Stop & Shop; they didn’t have it there,” Roberson said. “So I tried CVS; they didn’t have it there. So I tried WalMart…and of course they didn’t have it there.”
Roberson finally found EnfaCare at a Stop & Shop in Bellingham, Mass. He bought the last four cans.
“I think I ended up spending something like $120 on formula,” he said.
That’s not supposed to happen. Roberson’s wife and their baby are enrolled in the federal food assistance program known as WIC, for women, children and families. The WIC program – which enrolls more than half of all babies born in Rhode Island – provides benefits meant to cover the cost of about 90% of Rhode Island low-income families’ formula needs, according to the state Department of Health.
The Lumpkins’ WIC benefits were supposed to pay for eight 12.8-ounce cans of EnfaCare per month. At about $28 per can, that’s roughly a $224.00 per month value. But Roberson said he tried lots of stores in Rhode Island that take WIC and none of them had EnfaCare. WIC benefits can’t be used out-of-state. So when Roberson found EnfaCare in Massachusetts, he had to pay out-of-pocket.
“I wasn’t sure when we’re going to have the next opportunity to get formula,” he said. “So I really had to kind of grab as much as I could.”
Tight supplies
Ongoing supply chain problems have made baby-formula supplies tight during the pandemic. In February, Abbott Laboratories, the country’s most popular baby-formula brand, initiated a recall after identifying four bacterial infections, including one fatal illness, linked to its products. The company temporarily closed its Sturgis, Mich., plant. Across the country, store shelves emptied out. Then in mid-June, less than two weeks after restarting production, flooding caused by severe thunderstorms prompted another shut-down. The plant has yet to re-open.
The out-of-stock rate for baby formula in Rhode Island at the end of May averaged about 92% — the highest in New England and well above the national average, according to an analysis by Bloomberg news. The shortage is particularly hard for the hundreds of Rhode Island families who rely on benefits from the federal WIC program to purchase special formulas for infants born prematurely or with allergies or sensitivity to conventional formula, according to an analysis of state health data by The Public’s Radio.
WIC participants can use their benefits at roughly 165 Rhode Island stores enrolled in the program. But they can only use WIC benefits to buy formula covered by the state’s contract. WIC doesn’t allow online purchases. And WIC also generally doesn’t cover readymade formulas or organic brands. So when formula supplies tightened, some WIC participants turned to Facebook and other social media sites for help.
‘Whatever I can find’
“Anyone know where I can get enfamil sensitive?” Daisha Seng posted earlier this month on the local Facebook group, Formula Share & Trade-Rhode Island.
Seng, 24, lives with her boyfriend, Victor Baez, and their 11-month-old son, Ocean, in Providence. They supplement breastfeeding with formula while Seng is at work. But Seng said the formula shortage has meant constantly switching formulas.“I’m a first time mom,” she said. “So I’m like, ‘Why is he screaming every time he drinks a bottle? Is that normal?’” After the Similac Sensitive her pediatrician prescribed was recalled in February, Seng said, she had to switch brands five or six times to find one her son could tolerate and that stores had in stock. Eventually, she gave up trying to use her WIC benefits on formula.
“I literally have to get whatever I can find,” she said.
Rhode Island WIC officials say they often work with pediatricians to find a suitable substitute for hard to find formulas so families can use their benefits. WIC also publishes a list of formulas that participants can substitute for their usual formula. But switching formulas can be difficult.
“It’s very stressful for people,” said Lisa Zerdelian, a pediatric nurse practitioner at Thundermist Health Center in Woonsocket. “You change brands and all of a sudden they’re fussy and gassy. It’s not a small deal.’’
When the Lumpkins family had trouble finding the high-calorie EnfaCare formula, Dennis Horta, the WIC coordinator in Woonsocket, contacted their pediatrician. The family got a new prescription to use a higher concentration of standard formula, which is more widely available.
“Most of the time, they do end up finding it at a WIC store,’’ Horta said. “They just may have to go out of their area to get it.”
The federal government says it’s trying to increase formula supplies by importing formula from overseas. Target stores in Rhode Island are receiving shipments of formula from the UK and Australia this month, but that won’t help families like the Lumpkinses. Rhode Island’s Target stores don’t accept WIC benefits. State health officials say another shipment from Europe is heading to Walmart stores in a few weeks, where families can use their WIC benefits at most stores.
Formula switching may help explain why purchases by Rhode Island WIC families of specialty brand formulas like the non-milk based Similac Total Comfort in April fell 81% from a year ago, the data shows. And purchases in April of Similac Neosure, for premature infants, by WIC participants fell 65% from April of last year, even as WIC enrollments remained largely unchanged. The state reported similar declines since mid-February, when the recall began, raising questions about whether the drop is due to caregivers like Lumpkins and Seng having trouble finding the formula in stores that accept WIC or finding it at all.
“I’ve worked for WIC for about 37 years,’’ Barone said, “and this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this.”
In recent weeks, the shortage has begun to ease, Barone said, at least for some WIC families.
“Pretty much everybody is stocked with standard formula. Once you get beyond that standard formula…the really specialized stuff, those are still a problem. They’re very hard to find.”
Any Rhode Island residents who are unable to find formula, regardless or whether they participate in WIC, can contact the state Health Department’s Health Information Line.
Health reporter Lynn Arditi can be reached at larditi@thepublicsradio.org. Follow her on Twitter @LynnArditi. The Public’s Radio’s Jeremy Bernfeld contributed to this story.
