Life Choices Care Center provides baby formula through a free pantry.
Tom Russo | Daily Reporter
By Elissa Maudlin
Located at 1454 N. State St. in a one-story brick building, the Life Choices Care Center has a pantry. Shelves line the walls, holding different items pregnant women or women with children may need, including diapers, baby shower baskets and — despite the shortage — baby formula.
After filling out intake paperwork, people can come to the center twice a month and get two cans of baby formula per family for free. For specialty formula or formula in short supply, like Nutramigen and Neosure, families are limited to one can.
This is open to people outside of Hancock County, although some people may be redirected to closer options.
Reba Kindrick, the mother of a two-month-old along with two older children, struggled to find specialty formula for her child. Having driven to Franklin — an hour away — to find formula and with a child at home struggling to gain weight, she’d think, “What am I going to do?”
“You don’t want your child to end up in the hospital because he is not gaining the weight that he needs,” Kindrick said.
When she found out from her church about the pantry with baby formula, she said she felt like other people needed it more than her and “didn’t want to take from somebody who needed it more than [she] did.” However, after using the resource, she stressed Life Choices Care Center’s “closed-door policy,” and that you can tell them anything.
“They’re there for anybody who needs help,” Kindrick said. “It doesn’t matter your circumstances or anything.”
Darrian Stanger, a mom of three children with two nine-month-olds, said she had anxiety during the shortage.
“All the stores were really low on any kind of formula at all,” she said. “So, I was kind of panicking on what I was going to do and how I was going to take care of the boys.”
Her two nine-month-olds have extremely sensitive systems and use Puramino and, before using the pantry, she had two cans, which would last her about two to three days a piece, she said. Stanger has also used the pantry for other offerings, like clothes, diapers, wipes, etc, which helped when her children grew and she couldn’t afford to get more things at the time.
Despite seeing an increase in people coming in, Linda Vodney, center director, and Jillian Jarrett, executive director, thought there would be more people.
“We were saying, ‘People aren’t finding us,” Vodney said. “We’ve got formula, we can help. People aren’t finding us.”
Vodney made a social media post about the center’s pantry with baby formula that “blew up,” she said. The next work day, the center gave out and promised around 30 baby formula cans — a change from their typical numbers before the post.
The center got a grant in 2020 for baby formula from the Hancock County Community Foundation. The grant, along with donations from the community, allowed the center to get baby formula for their pantry.
“This community is extremely giving, and so we are blessed by the generosity of other people,” Jarrett said.
The pantry has been at the center since its beginning in 1999, when local pastors combined forces to provide help for pregnant women, women with children, people in crisis pregnancies and people needing help with pregnancy decisions. Jarrett said the center provides “life-affirming” options, and services include pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, pregnancy counseling, material assistance, post-abortion support, sexual integrity education, adoption referrals and other services, which are free and confidential, according to the center’s website.
From talking with women coming in for baby formula, one thing women keep saying is how “disheartening” the shortage is, Jarrett said.
“As a mom or as a dad or whatever, there’s a lot that’s already going on that you’re dealing with as a parent,” she said. “To not be able to feed your kid is not really something we ever thought we’d face.”
She said people are super happy to receive the resource and hopes more people will continue to come.
The center is open Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, people can use the contact form on the Life Choices Care Center website at https://www.lifechoicescarecenter.org/contact.
