Drexel University

The Center for Hunger-Free Communities

Solutions Based on Science and the Human Experience

Women Infants and Children

The Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides federal grants to states for supplemental foods and infant formula, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk. Forty-five percent of children born in the US participate in WIC, and the WIC program has been show to be beneficial to the health of infants (WIC Surveillance Study).

 I breastfed the oldest one. The youngest one, he gets sick a lot, but my oldest one doesn’t really get sick at all, because I breastfed him … [the younger one] had to stay in the hospital for about seven days because I caught an infection and then it passed through him. And at the time I couldn’t afford a breast pump. I couldn’t get to a pump fast enough so my milk dried up and I couldn’t breastfeed.

The WIC office, they just changed the baby’s milk because they lost their contract with Similac. But they could’ve called us and told us so we could’ve known what to expect… but they didn’t do that.