**This is all from my own personal experience, so what I may have gone through may not be the same for you**
Make sure you get your child's doctor to write a prescription for it.
When talking to insurance to try and get elemental formulas covered. DO NOT call it "formula", likely you will get your first refusal that way or "see if you qualify for WIC", or my favorite was, "Ask your local church to see if they can help you"...ummmm what?!
What you want to call it is "Medically Necessary Nutrition," then you can say it is amino acid based elemental formula (but try not to even say that if you can).
You don't get it through a pharmacy, it comes via a DME (Durable Medical Equipment) company. Make sure your doctor writes the rx for a DME. (Note, I have heard of a few families having it go through a pharmacy but not many).
If insurance won't cover it....
Find a patient advocate- and see if they can help get things covered for you. After spending over a day being told "NO" we won't cover formula (ah, before I knew about "Medically Necessary Nutrition"), a friend put me in contact with a patient advocate. With one call, she was able to get things fixed and covered for us! So try to find some patient advocate program in your area.
If that doesn't work, there are assistance programs to help reduce the cost or even pay for the entire cost of formula. Talk to the formula company.
If you qualify for WIC, they will very likely cover it.
If you/your children qualify for Medicaid, they will very likely cover it (still might be a bit of a fight on your hands but less of one that private insurance). Little Cub and Baby Bear are on Medicaid because of their medical conditions.
Check to see if your state mandates that insurance covers elemental formulas! Not all states do this yet but slowly more and more are.
Neocate (what Baby Bear uses)
Put the water in your bottle AND THEN the scoops of formula. If you do it the other way around you will have a more condensed version, and constipation will happen.
Neocate infant has a 1:1 ratio, 1 oz of water to 1 scoop of formula.
Per what Nutra told me when I called- -Once the bottle touches a child's lips, that bottle will only be good for 1 hour (and you will notice yellow to brown discoloration will start to happen at right around 1 hour!). -Bottle (that hasn't touched the lips or any other part of the body lol) at room temperature will last 4 hours. -Bottle in the fridge will last 24 hours (again, as long a it is "new" and hasn't touched the lips).
Poop will be green. Seriously, it will be a dark army green!