El Paso families struggling to find baby formula

EL PASO, Texas – Parents and caretakers of infants and toddlers are struggling to find the necessary infant formula for their children.

The baby formula shortage continues to worsen throughout the nation. Manufacturers of the product say they are producing at full capacity, but the current demand is too big.

Texas is one of six state where more than half of the baby formula was sold out in the last week of April.

El Paso mother Grecia Juarez, heavily relies on this item.

Juarez is a mother of two children, a 13-month-old girl and a 3-month-old boy.

She said, she had to worry about formula for both of her children until a few months ago when her oldest daughter switched to toddler formula.

However, her son relies on baby formula each day and uses almost one can of baby formula each day.

She said couldn't breastfeed her first child since she got COVID-19 when she gave birth and as a result had to switch to the formula in the hospital. As for her second child, she wasn’t able to breastfeed because she wasn’t producing as much supply as her baby needed.

Juarez said she has run into challenges the last couple of months trying to find baby formula at local stores.

"As a parent, it is scary you know because there is nothing else that I can feed my him except for formula," she said.

Juarez said that her usual grocery run involves visiting multiple stores throughout the city to stock up on the necessary formulas, since most of the time she only finds empty shelves.

“The other day, like last week on Tuesday, I drove all the way to Walmart on Mesa because the Walmart app said they had the formula. There was none, so it has been hard going store to store trying to find the correct one," Juarez said.

Juarez hopes the shortage ends soon.

“It’s just the fear of not feeding your baby I guess, but I was scared just not knowing what the next step was. No parent wants their baby to go through that.”