Health Controversy: Woman Arrested for Drinking While Breastfeeding

Are you people crazy this women needs to go to jail !! you can't drink while your pregnant or breastfeeding... She should get the whole 5 years & should have to complete some kind of rehab class to get her kids back .. The baby was only 6 fricken weeks old, They said on the news this women was holding her child up side down by its ankel {cnn}!!! Shes NUTS!!

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Finally, something happens in North Dakota!

No she shouldn't go to prison. She should have to do parenting classes, drug and alcohol counseling, and probation for at least 2 years! That baby needs his/her mother no matter what.

she shouldn't have breastfed while drinking or right after; i think. but that being said what's this officers perception of one too many? could have been having a drink, two drinks, getting hammered? how did this guy determine this? personally maybe she should have thought about how much too drink and how much to pump before. she needs a little help with herr parenting but not jail, it was a drink and poor judgement. she was not sitting on top of a moving vehicle while holding her child. there are alot of worse things she could have used poor judement on actually.

This is so sad. The woman needs some help, not prison. I had a little wine in the evenings while I was breastfeeding, it is relaxing and if you're careful, not a problem. Let's support women going through the difficult early days of motherhood, not incarcerate them. Geez.

This is a good blog post. Yeah, that sentence is over the top, and it's going to be traumatic for both mother and child. Our society has a throw away attitude with people and it solves NOTHING.

Jail time? Why would you punish a newborn by throwing the mom in jail? I agree, in this case mandatory parenting classes and monitoring are in order, not punishing the child by separating it from it's mother for the first five years of its life.

she shouldn't have breastfed while drinking or right after; i think. but that being said what's this officers perception of one too many? could have been having a drink, two drinks, getting hammered? how did this guy determine this? personally maybe she should have thought about how much too drink and how much to pump before. she needs a little help with herr parenting but not jail, it was a drink and poor judgement. she was not sitting on top of a moving vehicle while holding her child. there are alot of worse things she could have used poor judement on actually.

From what I understood when this story first broke was that there was a domestic violence call to the home and this woman was highly intoxicated. I think being highly intoxicated is different that one drink. If this woman had put a beer in a sippy cup and served it to a two year old people would be screaming for her head, but in essence she did the same thing the only difference was the container both are "serving' alcohol to a minor. Five years may be excessive, but obviously something needs to be done.

No, she should not be separated from her child. Because she was drinking doesn't mean she is a neglectful mom; it does clearly illustrate that she was not thinking of the harm it could do to her baby. Another concern that she should think very hard about is that you can not possibly take good care of a small child if you have been drinking too much.
It sounds as though this woman is short of good mental processing, but prison will not cure that. She should be assigned to probation with weekly parenting classes.

It is not the mother's body if she is still giving from that body to her child. A half glass, sure when you are not breast feeding!

Being drunk while trying to take care of a baby is terrible & she shouldnt of done that but 5 years is too harsh. She should get a ticket, be on probation & maybe some parenting classes. Women that drink while pregnant are doing more harm to their baby & nothing happens to them....What she did was totally wrong but thieves & other criminals get by with less time. Plus how long does it take for alcohol to get from your mouth to your breastmilk???

To me, this is no different than driving while intoxicated. The question is not "how much alcohol is being passed in the milk to the child". The mom could have dropped her kid! The child could have died! In a worse case scenario, there was a woman who, drunk and nursing, passed out and rolled over on her child, smothering it! Yes, she probably wasn't going to hurt the child, but plenty of people have "had a few and made it home OK" IT'S NO EXCUSE! If she was intoxicated and nursing, some jail time is A-OK with me! She didn't have a small glass of wine, she was drunk, according to the article. You can argue about whether 5 years is kinda harsh for a first timer but to say that there is nothing wrong with it is really missing the point. Would you drive around town with no baby seat? Our parents all did it and most kids grew up OK... Same idea---and a very, very, bad one!

Heres the big picture. The law should do what ever is in the best interest of the child. Why was the mom drinking heavily when she had a 6wk old baby. What caused the domestic violence call. Does the mom have un-diagnosed post-partom depression and a fight broke out and she then drank to cope.

I dont think a little hurts, but she really shouldn't over do it.

Why was she even getting drunk to begin with? She's a new mother! Maybe she needs to go to rehab instead of prison...

alcohol is indeed passed throught the breastmilk but not at the very moment u drink it... takes it a little while to get through your system... i'd be more concerned if she hadn't pumped and dumped several hours after and the following day... at least she knew her baby was hungry... I don't think she needs any kind of prison time if anything maybe someone should sit down with her and explain to her that alchol can be passed through her breastmilk... maybe she lagitimatley didn't know this bit of information... again... i don't feel she was neglecting her child... and i agree with some of the above statements... don't punish this child by taking it's mother away for the first 5 years of it's life... that's rediculous... parenting classes... hello.