Sometimes you have one of those days.  We see lots of mom in our office: brand new moms, single moms, foster moms. Today, a foster mom came in with a 1 month old CPS baby.  She is an amazing caregiver - grandmother-type. We enrolled the baby and issued standard-approved formula.  We discussed briefly about how baby was doing. Not often is the birth mom part of the conversation as, well, not much is shared through the foster agency (she did not even know the baby's birth weight) about the birth mom.  She did say the birth mom has visitation with the baby twice a week while CPS staff is present. The foster mom was told that the birth mom does breastfeed her baby during the visitations, as long as she has a "clean" drug screen at that time.  The foster mom also said the birth mom regularly pumps her milk and, through CPS staff, passes it along to her (foster mom), who was told by the pediatrician to discard it as it may not be "clean" if the milk was pumped on days mom is not tested. We finished our session and foster mom and baby went on their way.
That is when I cried. Yes, she is right, the breastmilk could have drugs in it; we wouldn't know unless the milk was tested.  But I thought of the birth mom who was dedicated to pumping (maybe she WAS clean) and saving her milk for her new baby.  She did not know the milk was being discarded.  And, yes the baby is getting some breastmilk during visitations.   But I still cried, for the birth mom trying to be a good mother, I cried for the baby who was not getting all his mother's milk, and I cried for a child support system that is so very hard understand sometimes. 

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