I became the thing I swore I'd never become. I became a formula hoarder.
Not the crazy kind—or at least, that's what I told myself as I stood in the formula aisle at Fred Meyer with three cans in my cart, two in my arms, and a fourth one tucked under my elbow like a football. The shelf was half empty, which was better than the week before when it had been COMPLETELY empty, just a sad row of price tags and one dented can of toddler formula that someone had clearly returned and the store had put back out. I grabbed that dented can too. I'm not proud of it. But I grabbed it.
This was during the shortage. THE shortage. The one that made national news and sent parents into a panic and turned every formula aisle in America into a dystopian hellscape of empty shelves and purchase limits and desperate Facebook posts asking if anyone had seen the hypoallergenic kind anywhere. The one that had me driving to three different stores every weekend—Fred Meyer, Target, the little grocery store on Hawthorne that nobody seems to know about—hoping to find enough formula to get Lily through the next week. The one that had me calculating exactly how many scoops were left in each can and whether we could stretch it to payday.
I'd never thought about formula as something that could disappear. It was always just... there. On the shelf. In the store. Available whenever I needed it. The idea that the entire supply chain could collapse because of a single factory closure—one plant in Michigan, one contamination issue, one recall, and suddenly millions of parents were scrambling—had never crossed my mind. Why would it? I'm a dietitian, not an economist. I think about nutrients, not supply chains.
But here I was, in the formula aisle at 8 PM on a Tuesday, holding four cans of formula and feeling like a criminal.
I want to tell you about a mom I met during the shortage. Her name was Caroline, she was 35, and she had a four-month-old daughter named Maisie who was on amino acid-based formula—the most expensive, most specialized, hardest-to-find kind. The kind that's basically the formula equivalent of a unicorn. The kind that normally costs sixty dollars a can and during the shortage was going for two hundred dollars on the secondary market, if you could find it at all.
Caroline came to my office because Maisie had a severe cow's milk protein allergy AND a soy allergy AND reactions to the hydrolyzed formulas, and the amino acid-based formula was literally the only thing she could tolerate. Without it, Maisie would develop bloody stools and projectile vomiting and failure to gain weight. This wasn't a preference. This wasn't "I'd rather she have the organic stuff." This was life-sustaining nutrition for a baby with a medical condition, and it had vanished from every store in Portland.
"I've been to twelve stores," Caroline said, her voice tight and controlled in the way of someone who is holding it together by sheer force of will. "Twelve stores in three days. Fred Meyer, Safeway, Target, Walmart, Costco, that little natural foods store in the Pearl District. I even drove to Salem. Nothing. Nobody has it. I have three days of formula left. Three days."
She wasn't asking me for advice. She was asking me if I knew where to find it. She was asking if I had any connections, any insider information, any secret stash. I didn't. I called every contact I had—the dietitians at OHSU, the formula reps I'd worked with in the NICU, the pediatricians who sometimes kept sample cans in their offices. Nobody had the amino acid-based stuff. The shortage had hit the specialty formulas hardest of all.
Caroline ended up finding a can through a Facebook group—a mom in Vancouver whose baby had outgrown the allergy and had one unopened can left. She drove forty minutes each way to pick it up from a stranger's porch. This is what the shortage did to us. It turned formula into contraband. It turned mothers into smugglers. It turned every grocery run into a high-stakes treasure hunt where the prize was feeding your baby.
I had it easier than Caroline. Lily was on standard formula by then—we'd transitioned her off the hypoallergenic stuff, and standard formula, while scarce, wasn't impossible to find. But "not impossible" isn't the same as "reliable." I'd go to Fred Meyer on a Wednesday and find the shelves fully stocked, then come back on Friday and find nothing. No pattern, no predictability, no way to know if the formula would be there when I needed it. I started buying one extra can whenever I saw it in stock. Just one. Then two. Then whatever I could carry.
Mark called it my "formula insurance policy." I called it "not wanting my child to starve." Both things were true.
The shortage taught me things I didn't want to learn. It taught me that the infant formula supply chain is shockingly fragile—just a handful of manufacturers control the vast majority of the market, and when one goes down, the whole system wobbles. It taught me that the FDA's recall process, while necessary for safety, can have devastating downstream effects on families who depend on formula. It taught me that "just breastfeed" isn't a solution—not for the moms who can't, not for the babies who need specialty formula, not for the adopted babies or the foster babies or the babies whose mothers died in childbirth. Formula isn't optional for millions of families. It's essential.
And the shortage taught me something about myself: I am capable of a level of anxiety I didn't know existed. The fear of not being able to feed your child is primal. It's the kind of fear that bypasses the rational parts of your brain and goes straight to the lizard brain, the one that's been keeping mothers up at night since the beginning of time. I'd lie awake at 2 AM—because of course it was 2 AM, it's always 2 AM—doing mental math about how many cans we had, how many ounces Lily was drinking per day, how many days until we'd run out. The math never quite worked. There was always a gap. The gap was terrifying.
I started doing things I'd previously judged other moms for doing. I joined formula-swapping Facebook groups. I texted friends in other cities asking them to check their local stores. I considered—briefly, desperately—whether I could make my own formula at home. (Don't do this. I'm a dietitian and I'm telling you: DO NOT MAKE YOUR OWN FORMULA. The recipes online are nutritionally incomplete and potentially dangerous. But the fact that I even considered it tells you how scared I was.)
The shortage eventually eased. The factory reopened. The shelves refilled. The panic subsided into a kind of exhausted relief. But I didn't forget. I still have a small stockpile in the pantry—three cans, rotated regularly, just in case. Mark teases me about it. "The shortage is over," he says. "You don't need a formula bunker." And he's right, logically. But the lizard brain doesn't care about logic. The lizard brain remembers the empty shelves and the dented cans and Caroline driving forty minutes for a stranger's porch pickup. The lizard brain is still doing the math at 2 AM.
Here's what I learned from the shortage. Not the systemic stuff—I'm not an economist, I can't fix the supply chain—but the practical stuff that might help you if it happens again.
The biggest mistake I made was stockpiling formula I hadn't tried yet. I bought whatever was on the shelf, including brands Lily had never had, figuring anything was better than nothing. Then we tried one of the random brands and Lily refused to drink it. Wouldn't touch it. Screamed every time the bottle came near her mouth. So I had four cans of formula that were theoretically food but practically useless, and I was still scrambling for the brand she'd actually drink. Buy what your baby tolerates. Try new brands one can at a time.
Another thing I wish I'd known earlier: generic formula is the same as name-brand. I've said this before but it bears repeating during shortage times. Store-brand formulas are manufactured by the same few companies and meet the same FDA standards. During the shortage, the generics were sometimes available when the name-brands weren't because fewer people were buying them. Don't be a brand snob when the alternative is an empty shelf.
I also learned to build a reasonable buffer. Not a hoard—hoarding makes shortages worse for everyone—but a buffer. Two or three extra cans, rotated so they don't expire. Enough to get you through a week or two if the supply chain hiccups. Think of it as a pantry staple, like flour or canned beans. You wouldn't wait until you were completely out of flour to buy more. Don't wait until you're completely out of formula.
Know your resources too. WIC offices often have emergency supplies. Pediatricians have sample cans. Lactation consultants and feeding specialists—people like me—have professional networks that can sometimes locate hard-to-find formulas. Don't be too proud to ask. During the shortage, I made calls for patients I hadn't seen in months because they were desperate and I had contacts. The parenting community shows up during crises. Let it.
And if your baby is on specialty formula, have a backup plan. Ask your pediatrician what the next-best option would be if your usual formula isn't available. Get the recommendation in writing. Keep it in your phone. During the shortage, I saw parents making desperate substitutions without medical guidance because their pediatrician's office was closed and they had to feed their baby SOMETHING. Having a documented backup plan removes some of the panic from the equation.
I donated the random-brand formula Lily wouldn't drink. A mom in the Portland group took it—her baby wasn't picky, thank God—and I felt a little bit of the hoarder guilt lift. We're all just trying to feed our babies. We're all just trying to survive the empty shelves and the supply chain chaos and the primal fear that maybe, this time, we won't find what we need.
The formula aisle at Fred Meyer is fully stocked these days. I checked last week. Rows and rows of cans, every brand, every type, the labels bright and reassuring. I stood there for a minute, just looking at it. A mom walked past me with a newborn in a carrier and grabbed a can of standard formula without even glancing at the price. She didn't know. She didn't know what it felt like to stand in this same aisle and see nothing but empty metal shelves and her own panicked reflection in the fluorescent lights. I hope she never knows.
The stockpile is still in my pantry. Three cans, rotated, just in case. Mark calls it the formula bunker. I call it peace of mind. At 2 AM, when the house is quiet and Lily is sleeping and the lizard brain starts doing its anxiety math, I think about those three cans and I feel a little bit better. Not completely better—nothing about parenting ever feels completely better—but better enough to go back to sleep.
— From Portland with exhaustion
