Puyallup mom searched until she cried for infant formula. Then it made her baby sick
Puyallup mother Hannah Potter was becoming increasingly frustrated in late 2021 and early 2022 trying to find formula for her infant son, Grayson. Supply chain issues made it a hard-to-get item across the state and the nation.
“I was driving all over Washington,” Potter recalled. “I drove all the way past Bremerton and all the way past Everett to get formula.”
Grayson was on a hard-to-find formula, Similac, made by Abbott Laboratories.
“I had just got to the point ... I was crying,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Potter eventually got enough formula by February to last Grayson through his first birthday on April 13.
“I just was happy that I finally had formula because I had spent the last three to five months literally driving all over Washington state for it,” she said.
Any sense of security for her son was soon shattered.
In February, Grayson became lethargic and wouldn’t eat.
“And then immediately after he would finally eat, he would get sick,” she recalled. Pediatricians attributed it to a stomach bug as Grayson’s condition dragged on for a week.
“He just kind of looked like a limp potato,” Potter said.
On Feb. 18, as she was cooking dinner, Potter’s phone began pinging with messages. It was her mother, sister and friends telling her about a nationwide recall of Abbott products after bacteria infections sickened several babies and killed at least two.
Potter checked codes on the 29 cans she still had — 26 of them were part of the recall.
The next morning Grayson woke with a 103.7 fever.
“And he was projectile vomiting,” she said. “We went to the ER.”
After eight hours in the Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital emergency department, Grayson was sent home. Blood tests confirmed he had the same bacterial infection linked to the contaminated formula, Potter said.
Shortage
The recall made a bad situation worse. There just isn’t enough to go around.
“In many states, including Texas and Tennessee, more than half of formula is sold out in stores. Nationwide, 40 percent of formula is out of stock — a twentyfold increase since the first half of 2021,” The Atlantic reported in a May 12 story on the shortage. “As parents have started to stockpile formula, retailers such as Walgreens, CVS, and Target have all moved to limit purchases.
When Lakewood mom Andrea Davis’ now 18-month-old son, Franklin, was born, Davis struggled with breast feeding.
“I relied on formula as really the sole source of food for my little guy,” she said.
She’s now transitioning him to milk but he’s having digestive issues and still needs some formula.
It’s been a similar journey for Hannah Potter’s sister, Kelsey.
Kelsey Potter’s daughter, Brooklyn, was born in August 2020. The baby was lactose intolerant so Potter used a formula, Alimentum, made by Abbott.
On Thursday, a 32-ounce jug was going for roughly $12 at Target online but was listed as “limited stock”.
Earlier in the year, when the shortage worsened, the formula was even more difficult to find.
“I spent an entire weekend driving from store to store just trying to find a can of this medically tailored formula, which was nearly impossible,” Kelsey Potter said.
Potter said Brooklyn would go through more than one jug a day. She’s now on a supplemental toddler formula.
Hard times for low income families
Both Kelsey Potter and Davis said they found savings by buying online in larger quantities.
“My income allowed me to do that,” Davis said. “But for families that are on a fixed income or a week to week budget, they probably couldn’t have done that.”
Working parents might not have the ability or time to drive to multiple stores, looking for formula.
Both Davis and Kelsey Potter have insight into the lives of working parents. They work for Tacoma-based Coordinated Care, which manages benefits for the state’s Apple Health Medicaid members and the 25,000 children in its foster care program.
“We heard about this, not only from personal experience, but also from the pregnant and new moms enrolled in our plan,” Davis said. “This is a big, big issue with our nurse case managers and our community health workers (who) were struggling to find formula.”
Adding to the burden, families receiving benefits from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) are limited to the types of formula they can purchase.
In addition, some pharmacies don’t accept WIC, Davis said. Parents who did buy the contaminated formula through WIC benefits have faced a hurdle getting reimbursement for the recalled formula, Davis said.
Hannah Potter said it took her a month to get reimbursed the nearly $1,000 she spent on the recalled formula.
“When I talked to them for customer service, they just didn’t care,” Hannah Potter said. “All they cared about was getting the recalled formula.
“I probably made that Similac customer representative want to quit her job.”
Food banks
Food banks are often a lifeline for low-income families struggling to get food on their tables. When it comes to formula, they are often empty handed.
“The food pantries never have a lot of formula,” said Elizabeth Howe, the development director the Emergency Food Network, which distributes comestibles to 75 food banks, hot-meal sites and shelters around the region.
Formula is expensive — $20-30 a unit. That money can be stretched further on other items, she said.
Some food banks do get formula from donations or purchase it with their own funds.
The last batch Nourish Pierce County received was part of the recall from Abbott. It was never distributed said CEO Sue Potter. She is not related to Hannah or Kelsey Potter.
“We had to get rid of it,” Sue Potter said. “Destroy it.”
On Thursday, Sue Potter was quoted $28,876 for 256 cases of Enfamil infant formula from a distributor.
“This is close to what I have paid in the past for a full semi of a canned vegetables — which could last us 9 to 12 months,” Potter said. “I would suspect that if I purchase these four pallets (1,536 cans), this would last one month.”
Meanwhile, Abbott and other manufacturers say the formula shortage could last for months. A congressional committee scheduled a hearing May 25 about the shortage.
This story was originally published May 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
