Insurance covers breast pumps and lactation support—but doesn’t cover formula or donor milk for those who can’t breastfeed
There’s an insurance gap when it comes to feeding support. Parents of newborns are entitled to receive a free breast pump—and many are eligible to receive lactation support. But if you’re a mom who doesn’t have breast tissue, what good is a breast pump? You might be baffled to learn that for moms who can’t breastfeed due to breast cancer or gynecologic cancers, there’s no insurance coverage for formula or donor milk. It doesn’t make sense.
That’s why formula company Bobbie For Change teamed up with The Breasties, a nonprofit that supports those affected by breast or gynecologic cancers, in an effort to shed light on this glaring formula insurance gap. If you’re a new parent impacted by cancer and you aren’t able to breastfeed your baby, you can apply to win a free year of Bobbie formula. Sponsorship applications are open until Oct. 3.
For the first six months of life—and up to 1 year, infants who aren’t breastfed can only consume formula or donor milk. And it’s expensive. (Using a brand-name organic formula could cost around $3,000 for a 1-year supply.) Of course, breastfeeding isn’t free—but pumping supplies and expert support is often covered by insurance.
For Molly O’Toole, winning the Bobbie x Breasties sponsorship in 2022 had an incredible impact on her motherhood journey—aside from the financial benefit.
“It was such a relief and a point of pride to know that I would be able to provide my son with the very best formula out there and from a company that I felt stood for something,” O’Toole shares with Motherly. “But beyond the health and joy it brought him, and even beyond the obvious financial benefit, there was something about the experience of meeting other women in my shoes that had a lasting impact on me.”
As a new mom who had undergone treatment for triple negative breast cancer, including a bilateral mastectomy, she felt like she hadn’t found her people.
“I had found a wonderful community through The Breasties organization who helped me through active treatment and continues to support me in survivorship, but I wasn’t totally comfortable sharing about my motherhood journey in that space: There are many young women impacted by breast cancer who may want to have children and aren’t able to, or have to wait years to even try. It felt insensitive to share what I was going through as a new mom with them,” O’Toole says.
In the first-time moms group she had joined, she found that most of the conversations centered around breastfeeding. “Of course that is a hugely important part of motherhood for a lot of women, but it made it hard for me to feel at home there.”
But when Bobbie gathered all the sponsorship winners on a Zoom call last year, “I had this overwhelming feeling of being completely understood,” O’Toole confides. “I burst into tears just looking at these other women.”
“Here [were these] moms or moms to be, who were directly impacted by breast cancer and had lost their opportunity to breastfeed because of it. It just felt really, really good to see their faces and know they existed. It also felt really good to feel seen and valued by the Bobbie organization.”
Beyond trying to close the insurance gap in equitable feeding support, the Bobbie x Breasties initiative helps parents in similar situations find others who have gone through what they experienced, too, from intensive cancer treatments to fertility preservation to mourning the fact that they may never be able to breastfeed their babies.
“I had spent some time mourning the fact that I would never be able to breastfeed when I found out the details of my diagnosis,” O’Toole shares. She was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer and the BRCA1 genetic mutation at the age of 31, when she was 8 weeks pregnant with what would have been her first baby. “We lost the baby at 12 weeks, which was incredibly heartbreaking. But I was able to go through IVF/ fertility preservation and my husband and I froze several embryos before I started treatment,” she shares.
Because of the aggressiveness of her cancer and genetic mutation, O’Toole went through 16 rounds of chemotherapy and then had a bilateral mastectomy. “Mastectomy meant no boobs, no breast tissue, and no chance of ever breastfeeding. That was a really hard pill to swallow because I just always pictured myself breastfeeding my children and that option had been taken away from me before I could even try.”
After getting the green light for embryo implantation two years later, O’Toole got pregnant and gave birth to her son Bowen.
“‘Bow’ is a little nod to him being our rainbow baby, and also the rainbow at the end of a real dark time in our lives.”
Once Bowen was born, O’Toole says she tried not to think too much about what she couldn’t do for him. “Of course, the nurse asking me how breastfeeding was going, or the lactation consultant calling, or the large banner on my health insurance home page offering me a breast pump made it difficult to forget,” she recalls. And she hadn’t focused too much on choosing a formula—with everything on her plate, including a newborn and another reconstruction surgery coming up due to an implant infection, she didn’t have a whole lot of time to research.
But a friend introduced her to Bobbie, and Bo seemed to love it (his reflux symptoms decreased, she shares). Bo was about 5 months old when O’Toole found out she had won the rest of the year free. She had a second baby boy this summer who also drinks Bobbie, “and he loves it!” she gushes.
Take action to close the formula insurance gap
When you’re stressed and dealing with a cancer diagnosis or treatment, it’s overwhelming to be stressed about feeding an infant on top of it. To get involved and bring more awareness to the coverage gap, and ensure a more equitable future when it comes to feeding babies, sign Bobbie’s petition, send a pre-written letter to your lawmakers, and consider donating to The Breasties to support those impacted by breast or gynecologic cancer.
