>Does anyone know if an adoptive mother has the legal right to provide breast >milk or breastfeed her baby in the hospital before the adoption is final? >Is provision of breast milk to the adopted baby allowed merely because the >birth mother gives permission? > >We have a case of open adoption in our NICU. The birth mother is providing >colostrum/milk "for a while" and the adoptive mother is working towards >induced lactation. The staff views the baby's receipt of milk from the >adoptive mother as donor milk or somehow against our policy, except I know >of no such policy. >My initial response was that the birth mother decides the medical treatment >for her baby and thus may give us permission to feed milk from the adoptive >mother. Does the birth mother then need to give written authorization to be >included in the hospital record? Does the physician need to write an order >for the milk to be used? >Does anyone know of a hospital policy, legal ruling that would apply here? > >Cathy Carnaby, RNC, IBCLC >Omaha, Nebraska Cathy, I posted a while back on the this very topic with no pickup on the thread, so I hope you can generate some discussion . When an open adoption occured at our hospital with birth mother being aware of and ok with the adoptive moms desire to nurse shortly after birth, some felt that there should probably be some type of signed document givng permission but there was not precident for doing so. Sadly, our physicians were more concerned about the adoptive mother's HIV and Hepatitis status and whether she should be tested prior to nursing than anything else. BTW, watching this adoptive mom place this baby to breast and having the him latch beautifully with alert loving eyes, is a memory I will cherish as I was so thrilled to be there and having a small role in briging them together. Any legal eagles out there care to respond? LuAnn Smith York, PA _________________________________________________________________ On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html