Yeah, I drink while breastfeeding. So arrest me.
Reading about the arrest of this woman, on charges that she was “drinking while breastfeeding” really got my hackles up.
Police responding to a domestic disturbance arrived at Stacey Anvarinia’s home to find the mother breast-feeding her 6-week-old baby in front of them. And she was drunk, they said. Officers arrested the woman, who later pleaded guilty to child neglect and faces up to five years in prison.
Let me be clear that I do not think being “drunk” while caring for a baby is a good idea, ever, whether you are breastfeeding or bottlefeeding, or you are the babysitter or the father or whomever. Tiny babies are rather fragile creatures, and drunk people are rather clumsy and lack good judgment. So if this woman was really “drunk” while caring for her newborn, perhaps there was cause for alarm on the part of the officers. She could have dropped the baby, for example. But arresting her, and pinning it on drinking whilst nursing has all kinds of problems.
When I came home from the hospital after giving birth to each of my four children, I was sent home with prescription, narcotic pain pills like hydrocodone and percocet to take during the recovery period. And I did take them, happily. After my c-section with baby #4, I took them for several weeks because I was still hurting. The pills not only helped with the pain, but gave me a bit of a buzz. I believe it would be fair to say that I was nursing my babies “while high.” Should I have been arrested?
Heather Armstrong over at Dooce blogged this week about how she’s taking some new meds to help with her postpartum anxiety and depression. She also took antidepressants all the way through pregnancy. Should she be arrested? After all, while there is very little evidence that drinking alcohol while nursing causes any harm, there are all kinds of studies indicating that SSRI use during pregnancy and breastfeeding can be problematic. But this is a decision for a woman and her doctor to make. A mother’s postpartum depression can be a whole lot more problematic for a baby’s well-being than judicious use of medications to treat it.
I know, I know…you are going to point out that I am talking about prescribed medications, while alcohol is not a prescription med. But pain medication and antidepressants are something women take by choice, not by clear-cut medical necessity (as in, if you do not take this, you will experience heart failure).
And if we can arrest a woman for drinking alcohol while nursing, something that is unlikely to actually cause harm to the baby, are we going to start arresting women who have a glass of wine or two during pregnancy? That would actually make more sense (not) because we know for a fact that alcohol crosses the placenta in the same concentration as it exists in the drinking mother’s bloodstream. This is a different delivery mechanism than breastmilk, where alcohol would appear in minute amounts, if at all, and would then pass through the baby’s digestive tract before ending up in his bloodstream.
I drank while nursing, and would do it again. I think that many women are so fearful that they will have to radically change their diets or lifestyles in order to successfully breastfeed a baby that they just decide that bottlefeeding would be easier. Stories like this one reinforce that fear.
Addendum: Just saw this post, which makes it clear that a big part of the reason this woman was arrested is that she offended the officers by actually – gasp! – continuing to nurse the baby in their presence.
Addendum #2: Best comment on this today came from my friend Julianne who said, “My toddler son’s toughest day so far in life was when he chose to give up my milk. He had to give up red wine, chocolate & coffee.” HA!
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Just left you a comment on this on your other blog… Should have waited a few hours and posted it here…
A lactation consultant, who was very helpful in our son’s earliest days, actually instructed my wife to have a beer prior to or during nursing.
I agree about being drunk. That’s not good.
But drinking a beer can (some say) actually improve milk production. And it relaxes the mom, which helps.
Feeding an infant from a bottle “in front of people” is no less offensive than feeding from the breast. Eating is actually kind of disgusting at any age, but it’s accepted as public behavior—even hot dog- and Krystal-eating contests. You want to talk about “offensive”? Start there.
thank you! i feel 110% better about the occasional half-glasses of wine i’ve enjoyed as a breastfeeding mother.
Look, I have no idea if she was taking care of a newborn while drunk and, if she was, it’s clearly a bad thing. A newborn and heavy parental alochol consumption is a bad combination, especially if any (planned or unplanned) co-sleeping was about to take place.
However, I was both horrified and amused by the Police Lt.’s quote:
“This case is more than just the breast-feeding. It was the totality of the circumstances. It is quite unusual for a mother to be breast-feeding her child as we are conducting an investigation, whether she was intoxicated or not.”
First, obviously, this is not a justifiable reason to pursue legal action against this woman.
Secondly, uhhh, no shit sherlock! How many mothers of newborns are you investigating?
This comment illustrates that ignorance about breastfeeding on demand has reached a critical point. It’s at once heartbreaking and hilarious.
Look, I never respond to blogs, and I actually like yours a lot. But I think saying that women take antidepressants by “choice” and it’s not like they are going to die of heart failure is seriously underestimating these issues. Postpartum depression and depression during pregnancy are known to be really bad for the baby, not just the mom (as if that’s not enough!) and most psychiatrists and OB’s that I work with will agree that untreated depression and anxiety are FAR WORSE than the rather minor, possible,not likely and rather rare complications of SSRI’s in pregnancy, which are, by the way, still highly debatable.
Postpartum depression kills, increases child abuse and is not to be underestimated. Depression during pregnancy leads to low birthweight and other complications. Obviously having a drink while breastfeeding is not a crime, and obviously breastfeeding in a police officer’s presence is not offensive. But please, please, please do not compare this situation to mothers who make the difficult decision to treat their mental illness and take steps to care for thsmselves in order to be better mothers and happier people, to having a couple beers.
It’s just another example of this country’s conflicted feelings over breastfeeding. Everyone will say it’s the best thing to do and maybe judge you for not doing it, yet, they don’t want you to do it in their presence. But if naked boobs are on a twenty-something non-mother, hey, bring it on!
One of the reason many women stop breastfeeding so early is that they think they have to be a saint while they do it. I really wish our culture would chill out about this one. It’s part of our whose cable tv culture of fear thing, be paranoid about everything. The only way I got up to nursing a toddler was by making peace with this issue early on. Drunk baby care = bad. Two glassses of wine over 3 hours = OK for me.
This reminds me of the way many states are criminalizing women’s behaviour during pregnancy.
What got lost in the original reporting of this story is the breastfeeding women was abused by her boyfriend, she called the police for help her. What happened to him? He needs to be arrested for child endangerment.
I hope she sues that police department!
A lethal level of alcohol for many people is about 0.4% blood alcohol. Say the milk was at this level and the baby drank 6 ounces (180 ml) of milk. It would get 0.004 x 180 = 0.72 ml of EtOH. A teaspoon is 5 ml. So the dead momma gave her hungry baby 1/7 of a teaspoon of EtOH. No wonder this woman is a felon. Feeding her baby 0.8 proof hootch!
I can tell you that my mother both drank, and smoked throughout her pregnancy and subsiquent breast feading with me, and I turned out just fine, as far as I can tell. That was 40 years ago, and those were different times.
So I guess all those times I rubbed Wild Turkey on my childrens’ gums while they were 8 months or so old and trying to get in some rather stubborn, and extemely uncomfortable, eyeteeth would have gotten me what, shot out of hand, had these police officers seen me?
I do believe that bottle of whisky saved both my sanity and my childrens lives, they were really miserable for a couple of weeks each.
Hah hah. Glib, cute and funny. But, as long as you’re asking … yes, you should be arrested for drinking while you’re breast feeding.
I’m so glad that my mother was cremated and her ashes sprinled over a garden (she loved gardening). If this law enforcement buch knew about her they’d want to dig her out of her grave and throw her body in jail.
If my sister or me was teething, colicky or had something else where we couldn’t (or woudn’t) stop crying she’d slip a little (very little) booze in our bedtime bottle.
We seem to have worked out all right. We both lasted way to long to die young and leave a good looking corpse. She’s 70. I’m 62. Once it got too late to leave a good looking corpse we decided to live forever. So far, so good.
Did you bother to look for details other than the mess slapped together by the AP?
“There are other factors besides alcohol being transferred to the child – that isn’t the sole crux of the case,” Mattison (the DA) said. “She wasn’t in a position to care for the child properly.”
Anvarinia was arrested on Feb. 13, after police responded to a domestic disturbance call at her Grand Forks home, Mattison said.
Police witnessed Anvarinia breast-feeding her child and “asked her several times” to stop because she was intoxicated, Mattison said.
While the officers did not test Anvarinia’s blood-alcohol level, Mattison said, they “did note that she was extremely intoxicated.”
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2009/04/29/news/state/183793.txt
Please step down from your soapbox. No one is coming for your children because of prescription meds or an occasional adult beverage.
My wife breastfeed our daughter and was advised by the nurses to find a beer that she liked and have one before she breastfeed. The nurse said it helped in the production of milk because of the yeast and also that it relaxed the mother.
And by the time it gets into the breasy milk it has been very diluted.
Breastfeeding on pills is a no-no. Make a choice: painkillers or nursing. Don’t be selfish.
Alcohol damages the baby’s developing brain, drinking while breast-feeding is a NO-NO for good reason even tiny amounts of alcohol do disproportionate damage to the developing brain. Its not just because you may harm the baby physically, its because of the damage the alcohol directly does. The same applies to narcotics.
The word is “while” not “whilst”.
Anti-depressants take during pregnancy are associated with a higher risk of heart deformities and conjoined twins. I knwo of two women who had conjoined twins while on anti-depressants. Both sets of twins died. Most women who take anti-depressants are not under the care of a therapist. Talk therapy can do just as much for a depressed woman as pills. But then, those pills are so much easier than working on chaning behaviors.
I was nursing my baby while reading the blog and comments. Felt like opening a beer.
I do occasionally drink. I breastfeed my son, and have for 9 months, so far. I don’t really care what people think of me breastfeeding my son, but I do try to cover up if I feed him in public. Now, that’s a fight, because he tries to pull off whatever is covering him, because we don’t use one at home (no matter who’s around), and because he wants to see everything.
He was eight weeks early, and had formula only once when a slightly less competent NICU nurse didn’t bother to check the freezer.
@Ali,
In Katie’s defense, “whilst” is a perfectly acceptable substitute for “while” when being used as a conjunction. It’s not commonly used in the US, but that doesn’t make it incorrect.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/whilst
@DJ – hilarious! Cheers!
An occasional drink is okay while breastfeeding but any time you feel drunk and your nursing, the baby is feeling the affects of the alcohol too! Not to mention the psychological and physical affects of the alcohol on the baby too. I made the mistake one time when nursing my six week old son of having three glasses of champagne on New Years Eve thinking that the amount that would end up in my milk would be quite small. I was wrong- my son seemed more drousy, had less muscle strength, and was not sucking as actively as usual. My supply took a dip as well. I felt SO guilty about this and felt like such a bad mother. Thankfully he was back to normal about six hours later. For your child’s sake limit your alcohol consumption. You can drink as much as you want the rest of your life. When you are nursing, focus on your baby’s health and not your selfish need to get a buzz.
Ali – This is not the place for discussing your opinion on the best way to treat mental illness. You clearly do not have a nuanced opinion and your conclusions are not necessarily accurate. Your correction of grammar is petty and the fact that you know two people is not statistically significant of anything.
Katie – I have to admit I felt a little panicky when I first read about this woman’s arrest due to my own breastfeeding transgressions. But it is indicative of so much of the criminalization of behavior that we have as a society. 1 in 100 adults in the US are imprisoned – the highest rate and the highest population in the world. What constitutes a crime punishable by imprisonment needs to be rethought in many cases.
I am not a parent, but most of my friends are, and am well aware of what is considered “good parenting”. We coddle kids way, way, way, way too much now days. Kids need to break bones, get beat up, be deprived of wants, and generally find out things the hard way, if they are ever going to deal effectively with adulthood. So your kid accidentally got drunk once, because you accidentally had a little too much to drink, big freaking deal. You realize that as long as things are not systematic, the body will heal itself, right? Especially kids, they can practically grow new limbs, if need be.
All I have to say is yes through the research I have done. Responsible drinking during pregnancy and breast feeding is ok but not on a regular basis. So example weather or not her boob was hanging out if she was drunk that means there was enough alchol in her blood to be transfered to the baby. Which is child neglect. A newborns liver is not strong enough for alchol consumption. That is why it is recommended that if one is to decide to drink while they are breast feeding to either feed the new born right before or during your drink or pumping before having the drink and feeding the new born the pumped milk while you wait the 2-3hrs while the alchol passes through your system. A mean a responsible mother would not be drunk and still think themselves capable of being responsible enough to care for the child and be able to handle any emergencys or situations that may arrise. If she was stupid enough to drink to the point of being legally drunk while being the one responsible to feed, watch over, and care for her children then I agree she should be arrested for being even temporarily unfit to care for her children.
Even though I knew what I was getting into when we planned our second child, I have had to go to weddings, bbq’s, parties, etc, and sip water while everyone around me was drinking and being merry. I am swollen, bitchy, have heartburn, sore boobs, and I’m growing out of my maternity clothes. Is it so wrong that I fantasize about sitting on my deck and drinking a couple glasses of wine, just to get that giggly feeling I so remember??? If so than arrest me. I will do it in a way as to not hurt my baby (by timing and dumping if needed) But dammit, I feel entitled and will not let anyone make me feel bad about it.