Ashley Rodolph, a 26-year-old mother who lives in Texas, started buying ByHeart infant formula because she believed it was a safer, cleaner alternative to other baby products on the market.
But that assumption was dramatically upended this month. Rodolph learned that ByHeart was recalling its powdered formula because it is likely tied to an infant botulism outbreak that has sickened more than a dozen babies. She panicked, hoping the formula she’s been feeding her daughter for the past three months was not from a defective can.
“I don’t know if we’ve had those cans or not, and that was pretty terrifying to think about,” she said in a phone interview on Friday. “When you’re feeding your baby formula, you don’t think to keep the cans just in case of a recall.”
Rodolph and her husband stopped using the formula on Nov. 9, a day after the product was pulled from store shelves and online merchants amid an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration. She’s been advised by the family’s pediatrician to monitor her daughter Saphira for the emergence of symptoms.
“You look at your baby and you see them being totally fine, and then you question yourself like: What if they’re not? What if they’re showing symptoms and I just don’t know what they are? What if tomorrow she’s not OK?” Rodolph said. “It’s an absolutely terrifying situation.”
Rodolph is one of the many parents across the country who are deeply rattled by the botulism outbreak. As of Friday, 23 cases had been reported across 13 states, according to the FDA. No deaths have been reported to date, the agency said.
In a fact sheet, the FDA said most children with infant botulism will initially develop constipation, poor feeding, loss of head control and difficulty swallowing. The symptoms can grow more serious: difficulty breathing, respiratory arrest.
The symptoms take as long as several weeks to appear, the FDA said. If untreated, the infection can lead to paralysis and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ByHeart originally said it would recall two lots of the organic Whole Nutrition Infant Formula after the FDA announced it was investigating the outbreak’s links to the product. ByHeart then widened the recall last week to include all batches of the formula.
“The safety and well-being of every infant who uses our formula is, and always will be, our highest priority,” ByHeart’s co-founder and president, Mia Funt, said in a statement.
“This nationwide recall reflects our commitment to protecting babies and giving families clear, actionable information. Alongside this recall, we are conducting a comprehensive investigation to do our part to get the answers parents expect and deserve.”
Summer Besecke, a 25-year-old mother from Longview, Texas, said she was feeding her son Syrus when she learned via email that the formula she was using had been recalled.
“I yanked the bottle out of his mouth, and I started crying,” Besecke said. “At first, I didn’t know what botulism was, so I was concerned, and my heart kind of dropped.” She went online and did some research. “Instead of my heart dropping, it was more like a hole burning in my chest because I’m literally actively feeding my child this.”
Besecke then noticed troubling symptoms. The 6-week-old became constipated. He had trouble lifting his head. He was “a little more limp than usual,” she said.
Syrus spent two days in the hospital before he was released on Thursday, according to his mother. Besecke and her husband are now waiting for test results to determine if their son has botulism.
“It’s been so much worry,” she said. “I’m supposed to be cherishing these moments, and I was robbed of that.”
ByHeart faces at least two lawsuits from parents who say their babies were sickened and allege the company was negligent in selling “defective” formula. The families are seeking financial compensation for medical bills, emotional distress and other harm.
Yurany and Stephen Dexter of Arizona, the plaintiffs behind one of the suits, said their 4-month-old daughter Rose started to seem sick in August. She appeared weak and listless, her eyelids half-open.
“I just remember her lying there with her arms folded over her chest, being really quiet, refusing her bottle,” Stephen Dexter said in an interview.
The lawsuit says Rose ultimately needed to be flown by air ambulance to a children’s hospital in Phoenix — two hours away from their home in Flagstaff. She was treated there for about two weeks, her father said.
The Dexters believe ByHeart should face consequences.
“You’ve chosen to be in a position of providing a product that is directly marketed towards a group of people that are, by definition, helpless,” Stephen Dexter said. “If you’re not doing 110% to make sure the product you’re selling is absolutely pure, then we’ve got a problem.”
