Cool, A Totally Preventable Formula Shortage

Do America's powerful think about the needs of mothers at all? Ever?

It’s been difficult to write this week, beyond the normal reasons writing is difficult– ie: I’m a sleep-deprived new parent, I’d rather be doing other things such as watch that new Vanessa Bayer-Molly Shannon helmed series I Love That For You, and writing always kind of sucks even under the best circumstances. But this week, the bastards, as they say, have ground me down.

It’s more than the Supreme Court draft opinion that circulated last week, the one where Justice Samuel Alito refers to the “domestic supply of infants” and cavalierly that if a woman finds herself pregnant and doesn’t want to be, she can simply give the child up for adoption or raise the baby herself. (Giving birth? What, like it's hard?)

It’s more than the smattering of proposals at the state level that would criminalize abortion even in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, a condition under which an embryo physically cannot survive, and that will kill the mother if left untreated.

It’s more than the slimy doublespeak of GOP lawmakers who suggest from one side of their mouths that states should have the right to determine an appropriate level of abortion restrictions for their constituents, and on the other, quietly advocate for a federal Texas-style six-week ban.

The story that has pushed me to the very brink of Fuck It All Canyon is the one about the formula shortage, which seems to have caught lawmakers, regulators, and manufacturers completely by surprise. Over at the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg explains,

The worst blow came in February, when Abbott Nutrition recalled formula made in its Sturgis, Mich., plant. Two babies who drank formula from the plant died of bacterial infections, and others were hospitalized. Although bacteria wasn’t found in the samples they drank, Abbott announced the recall as a precaution.

For Abbott to face such a shutdown is significant, given the role it plays in the highly concentrated U.S. formula market. In 2008, three companies made 98 percent of the formula Americans bought; Abbott alone accounted for 43 percent of the market.

On Feb. 28, Abbott widened its voluntary recall. Supply problems have only worsened since then.

According to the retail analysis firm Datasembly, starting the week of April 24, the amount of formula available on shelves was 40 percent below normal inventory levels, up from 31 percent three weeks prior and 11 percent in November. In several states, there is half as much formula on shelves as customers would normally expect.

[Rosenberg’s excellent piece is well worth the read if you want to understand the myriad failures that got us here, and how now, still, with desperate parents running out of options for feeding their babies, the people who should be doing something about it are doing absolutely nothing.]

The formula shortage didn’t catch parents by surprise, at least not the ones populating the parenting message boards and Facebook groups where I lurk. They’ve been warning about an already bleak situation getting bleaker since the Abbott recall first happened, back in February.

And prior to that, according to Rosenberg, a whistleblower had filed a formal complaint to the FDA about the formula plant that was shut down last October, but the FDA didn't interview anybody about it until January.

We're talking two massive failures smashed together like a pile-up on an icy on-ramp.

But it gets worse. Rosenberg explains further,

… for those who receive aid from the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children — which limits recipients to a few brands of formula, and for which Abbott is a major contract-holder — the situation is considerably more difficult. Circumstances are even more dire for babies (and older children and adults with feeding tubes) whose life-threatening allergies or metabolic issues mean they can tolerate only certain formulas.

How does that look in practice? If you want to feel as though you’ve been kicked in the chest, there’s this New York Times piece on the families who can’t feed their babies.

For Darice Browning, the specialty formula shortage in Oceanside, Calif., has been so acute that she has considered going to the emergency room just to feed her youngest daughter, Octavia, who is 10 months old and has rare genetic conditions that currently make it impossible for her to eat solid foods. The food allergies she shares with her 21-month-old sister, Tokyo, cause both babies to vomit blood if they ingest dairy proteins.

At one point, Ms. Browning said, she called all of her daughters’ doctors looking for formula, only to be told that none had any.

“I was freaking out, crying on the floor and my husband, Lane, came home from work and he’s like, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, I can’t feed our kids, I don’t know what to do,’” Ms. Browning said.

The Times piece lists gut punch after gut punch-- the story of one mother who drove around for hours looking for the formula to feed her son. Another was scammed out of hundreds of dollars by a fraudster on Facebook. Others are paying jacked up prices to resellers. Moms are diluting formula. Some are mixing it with other ingredients in an attempt to make their supplies stretch.

Being poor or being on WIC or unable to breastfeed doesn’t make anybody a less good parent. How much you love your child and how much you want to do right by them is not correlated to how much money you have or how you feed them. I would do anything for my baby, just like these mothers, just like any mother. The pain and anxiety these mothers must feel is barely imaginable. When held up against the inaction of people who were supposed to prevent this, it’s just fucking heartbreaking.

Of course, as with everything relating to pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting, the people who know the least are the loudest. “Breastfeeding is free” is one common type of stupid comment I’ve seen on stories related to the shortage. Other parents have reported that observers have tsked and said that parents who formula feed should have “tried harder.”

As Buzzfeed’s Katie Camero wrote, “that’s not how boobs work.” A woman who has been feeding her child formula cannot simply will herself to lactate when Target’s sold out of Enfamil. If America could somehow convert the power of the confidence of its most ignorant into electricity, we'd be totally off oil by 2025.

"Shoulda breastfed!" not how the economy works, either. Despite the fact that employers are supposed to make reasonable accommodations to facilitate breastfeeding and pumping, they don’t. Low-income women are hit particularly hard, because a total lack of parental leave and other necessary support makes breastfeeding unfeasible for many.

“Just breastfeed!” is also not how society works. Women who breastfeed in public are still told by jackass busybodies they’re disgusting or lewd for feeding their babies. Mothers are also told by medical professionals that for the first six months of a baby’s life, they should be fed exclusively breast milk. I can’t speak for every mother nor would I try to, but I can say that my experience feeding my daughter exclusively breast milk for the first six months of her life has taken a toll on my sleep, my sense of independence, and my self-confidence. I can't work out like I used to. My clothes don't fit. I have yet to sleep all the way through the night. (If you ask my husband, he’d probably tell you that it’s made me less pleasant, overall, to be around.)

Which brings me back to Justice Alito and the powerful who think like him-- people who make public health policy based on scientifically unsound arguments about how pregnancy and childbirth work. People who would casually brush aside of the physical sacrifices they expect of anybody with a uterus without a second thought. People who would treat pregnancy and childbirth dismissively as minor inconveniences rather than seismic interruptions in a woman's existence, as though committing one’s body physically to 40 weeks of pregnancy is nothing, that birth and its attendant pain and trauma is no big deal, as though it’s fair to impose months or years of physical readjustment it takes for a person who gave birth to feel like herself again.

And then, once the baby is here, more confident stupidity from those in charge. There is no paid leave for mothers. There’s not enough support for those who breastfeed. There’s no formula available for those who don’t. There’s no affordable day care. There’s no affordable medical care.

There’s no workable plan to fix any of this.

I don’t believe that most of the people who run this country care about mothers at all. We do not occur to them.

I don't know how to fix this empathy gap, or if the remedy is simply to wait until the jackasses currently in charge are replaced by people who could pass fifth grade biology. But during that time, what becomes of the people who fall through the cracks? Who feeds their babies?

I need a drink.

Image via Shutterstock