Sheena, The situation with breastfeeding foster babies very much depends on where you are and who is in charge. Certainly some foster mothers have breastfed babies in their care with official sanction.....many more have done so without and some have had children removed or the threat of children being removed for breastfeeding. People have dobbed them in. In other cases authorities have turned a blind eye and pretned they don't know because it's easier. Many social workers etc are as unsure of what to do as foster mothers. Foster parents do not have any legal rights when it comes to children placed in their care. It is unfortunate that breastfeeding is not viewed as a normal part of child care :-( So...the situation is dicey. It is often not a case of legal or illegal but people's biases about breastfeeding. I have a case study of a mother who breastfed a medically fragile foster baby that has been accepted for publication in JHL. This paper also includes a discussion of the social, emotional and health issues surrounding the breastfeeding of foster children. Hopefully it should be in the next issue. I hope that it might be helpful to those who wish to advocate for vulnerable children and babies in foster care to be given care that is not essentially deficient. She may wish to check out the adotpive breastfeeding resource website which has a BB with a section for foster mothers. You mention that the mother is also breastfeeding the toddler. Darillyn and I are still sending out surveys to mothers who have attempted to breastfeed adopted children adopted at 4 months or older. If this mum feels comfortable contacting me (and I recognise that she may not wish to do so at this stage) it would be wonderful to have another participant in the study. Karleen Gribble Australia So legally speaking can DHS remove this baby from her care for > breastfeeding? Has this happened before? In talking more with the the > foster mom she states that the state removed the newborn and that there will > be no chance of reconciliation. > *********************************************** 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