I read that it could show up in the mom's urine for 2-3 weeks and I am
supposed to tell her to go ahead and breastfeed?

Thanks,
Annette Leibovitz, IBCLC

Dear Annette:  I don't see that there's much question here--telling her to
go ahead and breastfeed is the only sensible option.  Sometimes our choice
is the lesser of two evils--clearly breastfeeding with a small amount of
marijuana is going to cause much less harm than substituting formula.  We
don't yet know if marijuana causes any harm--although common sense tells us
it's a bad idea to expose a baby brain--and we do have tons (literally) of
information on the harmful effects of formula.

With this in mind, the question about when the marijuana's components clear
out of the bloodstream becomes irrelevant.  One surely is not going to
suggest pumping and dumping for however many weeks it will take.

What we'd all like to know is, at what level (assuming there is one) do the
risks of marijuana outweigh the risks of formula?  It seems that to sit and
smoke an entire joint at one sitting suggests a heavy user rather than a
light user--again, we don't have info on this but I would have a discussion
with her about moderation (just as Jack Newman says).

Arly Helm, MS, IBCLC

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