What You Need To Know 

A group on social media is helping families get baby formula quickly 

Youdle by Product Sightings is a mobile app on Facebook helping people across the country find essential items, like baby formula 

Youdle’s CEO says people are finding the baby formula they need on the website 

Abbot Nutrition restarted production at Michigan factory. This is the plant at the center of the nationwide formula shortage. It shut down earlier this year following a recall.

A few weeks ago, the company reached an agreement with the FDA to reopen, so Elecare formula should start to become available around June 20.

Parents can’t wait that long to feed their babies, and a group on social media is helping moms and dads get formula quickly.

Dominque Jackson spends three hours a day searching for baby formula for her three-month-old girl.

“This right here is all the formula that we currently have, just three. I supplement with breastfeeding. I don’t produce enough milk to breastfeed her and her get completely full, so I give her the breastmilk that I can, and then we give her the bottle,” Jackson said.

While the federal government works to increase supplies, mothers like Jackson worry how about long it will take to get more baby formula in the hands of mothers who barely have enough supplies to last three weeks.

“If we don’t get ahold of it, how am I going to feed my child, what am I going to do because she’s only three months old, her stomach can only handle milk,” Jackson explained.

Jackson travels out of the city and state to places like Virginia Beach to find formula.

“Very frustrating because there’s no guarantee that just because you’re driving from place to place that there’s going to be formula there so you could be wasting gas. I could go from Winston-Salem to High Point to Charlotte and there not be any formula around,” Jackson stated.

There’s hope for mothers like Jackson. Youdle by Product Sightings is a mobile app on Facebook helping people across the country find essential items. 

“They are finding what they need,” Kontji Anthony, CEO of Youdle Product Sightings, explained when asked how successful people have been at finding the products they need. 

Anthony saw the need to make the app available to people across the country when the pandemic hit, and people couldn’t find basic supplies.

As soon as the baby formula shortage started, people started posting on the Youdle app to make it easier for moms to find supplies.

“When someone in the community sees baby formula, they take a picture and they post it, so that other people can see where to find it, and we’ll say there are 20 cans of baby formula on this shelf at this store. It’s a beacon for moms to know that they can actually come there and see it in stock,” Anthony stated.

Jackson says the extra resources, like Youdle, and other Facebook groups helping mothers find formula gives her hope.

“I think it’s amazing that people would be so blessed enough to let people know what’s going on because it’s hitting almost every family right now, and it’s also helpful that I can go to my pediatrician, and they can give us samples of formula,” Jackson stated.

Jackson says samples from her pediatrician have become her saving grace.

Experts say another way to find baby formula is to reach out to breastmilk banks.

To learn more about Youdle, click here for the North Carolina website.

Anthony started the site out of Tennessee before making it nationwide. Here’s the link for Tennessee’s Youdle Facebook page.