Hi, Mary:

If they toxed the mom at delivery, chances are they'll tox the baby, too. If the baby tests positive to anything other than marijuana (at least in Illinois), DCFS will be called and will open a case. If mom says she's trying to get clean, and with either DCFS or detox treatment in place, they should do regular random drug screens to insure that she's staying clean. If she's doing two drops/week and both are clean, then the milk she pumped in between those drops can be fed to the baby. If she drops dirty, then the milk has to be discarded. That's really the only way to do this safely - with close management, lots of eyes and ears on the mom and baby, and pretty strict boundaries around how her milk is handled. Otherwise, if there's any chance that she might be feeding that milk to the baby, or if she's going to be unsupervised it's probably best for her not to continue to pump.

Letting a mom who tested positive for illicit drugs go home from the hospital with a baby is irresponsible - so hopefully the hospital wouldn't do that, and would get Child Protection involved. It would be the hospital's responsibility to make sure that the baby is safely discharged, and isn't fed any of mom's milk while in the hospital - until those clean tox screens can happen. Can she pump? It seems to me that no one could tell her that she can't - the question is more about whether that milk will be fed to the baby. What happens when she leaves the hospital isn't really the hospital's responsibility - maybe more the responsibility of who's monitoring her once she's out.

There are probably other perspectives on this - I'm speaking from my experience as a perinatal social worker who has recently had two such cases....

Peggy

 

Peggy Healy, LSW, IBCLC, RLC
The Art of Breastfeeding, Inc.
773-420-7534
www.artofbreastfeeding.com
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