Some Sonoma County parents desperate to find formula

It was 3 a.m. and Melissa Sparks was getting desperate. She sent out a plea on Facebook for help finding formula to buy for her infant foster child.

“ISO (in search of) this formula,” she wrote in a post on the Windsor Families page to find the brand of formula she needed for the 6-week-old baby girl. “If you happen to see it while you are out, please let me know! If you buy it, I’ll pay you full price or you can just tell me where it is and I’ll run down to get it.”

Her post was accompanied by a photo of Enfamil Neuro Pro Gentlease, the brand that doesn’t upset the baby’s stomach.

“It was kind of a dire situation,” Sparks, 37, of Mark West Springs, near the Windsor border, said in a phone interview. “I was down to 12 ounces of breast milk and two scoops of formula.”

She was encouraged by the response from the community, many offering to donate breast milk or try to find her the brand of formula she needed.

“It was wild, all the help that flooded in,” Sparks said. “I was able to get a can of formula by 8 a.m. that day.”

An employee of the nearest Costco even wrote her to say he would keep an eye out for the Enfamil and let her know when it was in stock, she said.

Sparks is just one of many parents in Sonoma County, and throughout the nation, who have been scouring stores and websites to find formula in the midst of a shortage caused partly by a massive safety recall at Abbott Nutrition that caused a plant shutdown in February.

Sometimes Sparks would read online that a certain store, such as Target, had the brand that she needed and she’d rush down to the store only to find an empty shelf, she said.

“We’ve been going to Safeway, Walgreens, both Targets, Walmart and Costco,” she said. “It’s not that unusual that you can buy things online and they’re not available in the store. But for something like this, I would think it would be a high priority.”

The good news is, Sonoma County retailers “are not experiencing anywhere near the kinds of shortages occurring throughout the country,” said Gabriel Kaplan, the county’s public health director. “But we are hearing from various individuals that they are having a hard time finding formula. It really depends on what particular type of formula you are looking for and also where your nearest retailer is and what their stocks are.”

Melissa, who grew up in Windsor, is married to Rocky Sparks and has a 7-year-old son, Jagger. They are fostering the baby, who just turned 7 weeks old, through the county while the biological mother goes through a drug rehabilitation program, she said, and the mother supplies pumped breast milk twice a week.

It just happened that last week the mother was only able to meet with them once, so they had to go a whole week without any breast milk.

The couple is compensated for buying the powdered formula by the county, but they have to find and purchase it themselves. Sparks said the baby, whom she is not allowed to name per foster child regulations, has been on four different formulas in her short life.

A check of three independent markets showed that two still had formula on hand and one didn’t. The one that had run out, Molsberry Market in Larkfield Shopping Center, is nearest to the Sparks family.

“The other day we did have some formula, but we’re out,” said a Molsberry cashier. “Last Friday we had seven cans on the shelf. It’s hard to get.”

Although some moms offered Sparks some of their own breast milk, she opted to go with formula.

Kaplan said if you are going to feed another mother’s milk to a child, it’s best to go through a breast milk bank where the milk has been vetted and screened so that nothing harmful is passed on.

Sparks said she is a member of a nationwide Facebook group called Life of Mom. The woman who started it will pay for formula to be delivered to families in need.

When contacted by mothers in need, Kaplan said the county has been encouraging people to contact the local WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program. Sometimes they qualify by income, and WIC has an ample supply of formula that it provides for free. Go here for the latest information: www.myfamily.WIC.ca.gov or call 707-565-6590. If families can afford to pay full price for formula, Kaplan suggests going online to larger chain stores’ websites or looking at social media groups that provide tips on where to find certain brands of formula.

Consult with your physician before substituting a different formula, a news release sent out by Bay Area counties advised, and consider reaching out to a lactation care provider if you want to increase your breastfeeding.

Independent grocery and drugstores are more likely to have formula in stock, he added.

The county discourages parents from going online and seeking recipes to make formula, Kaplan said, “because there could be a greater chance of bacterial contamination. Or it may not be the right combination of nutrients for the baby.”

Catholic Charities, whose Family Support Center serves 70 children of all ages on any given night, has an ongoing supply of formula as required by the state, said Chief Program Officer Jennielynn Holmes.

“But this is a new scenario, so we are making sure we have backup plans to our backup plans,” she said. “People are faced with impossible choices, and the ripple effect of those challenges is why we need to make sure we have what they need when they come to us.”

The FDA said this week it’s been working with U.S. manufacturers to increase their output of formula and streamlining paperwork to allow more imports. For now, pediatricians and health workers are urging parents who can’t find formula to contact food banks or doctor’s offices. They warn against watering down formula to stretch supplies.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

You can reach Staff Writer Kathleen Coates at kathleen.coates@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5209.