Skip to main content

Breastfeeding And Pot Smoking


There's no question that attitudes about marijuana use are changing due to increased accessibility to medicinal and recreational cannabis, and a general disinterest in the subject from the federal government. So I assumed that there would be a lot of debate surrounding pot smoking and pregnancy, nursing and parenting.

I was correct on two fronts. I have come across a lot of interesting information and opinions about smoking pot during pregnancy and/or as a parent. Brave souls (like Kiri Westby and Toni Nagy via the Huffington Post) started the public discussion about responsible parenting and recreational marijuana a couple of years ago.

But it's been very challenging to find any conclusive information about the potential effects of marijuana use on a breastfeeding mom and/or her baby. Everyone agrees that trace amounts of THC may or do make their way into breast milk. But more research is needed to determine the potential impact on a nursing baby.

The most comprehensive and well-researched essay I found is this one from The Cannabist. The Cannabist article cites another article from the Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey* to explain the public stance of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on marijuana and breastfeeding:
Because breastfeeding can mitigate some of the effects of smoking and little evidence of serious infant harm has been seen, it appears preferable to encourage mothers who use marijuana to continue breastfeeding while minimizing infant exposure to marijuana smoke and reducing marijuana use.
But even with this somewhat lax statement from NIH, The Cannabist article advocates abstinence during nursing due to a lack of available research. The magazine's editorial staff is reporting responsibly as the that the actual effects of breastfeeding with marijuana in your system are still unknown.

I think there exists a case study of sorts that can help us actually understand the real risks of marijuana and breastfeeding. I'd like to know... what happened to Crystal Cain of Oregon?

Crystal Cain is the Oregon mom who under the care of a midwife smoked marijuana while pregnant. She gave birth to a baby girl, about 8 weeks prior to her due date, in the summer of 2014. Whether smoking while pregnant had any bearing on the baby's early birth is unknown. She said she planned to continue using medical marijuana and breastfeed once she brought the baby home. She uses medical marijuana to help combat anxiety and depression. The doctors at the hospital advised her against breastfeeding; however, because of marijuana's legal status in Oregon they couldn't prevent her from breastfeeding. So the hospital asked her to sign a waiver acknowledging the potential risks. She signed it and took her baby home.

Presumably, she began breastfeeding and I hope it went well. The most recent article I can find on the subject is from October 2014. Every article I've been able to get my hands on is about releasing Cain from the hospital after signing the waiver.

The waiver seems to be the only piece of the story deemed newsworthy; whether or not the controversial waiver had an impact on the mom or baby is the real news in my book. And I'd like to know what happened, and whether this mom's intuition was right. I can't find anything about whether she successfully nursed her daughter, and if there were any side effects she can attribute to her use of marijuana while nursing.

So what happened? I've been leaving that very question in the comments section of every article I come across. Hopefully, we'll find out. I'd love to ask Cain about what happened if I can find her.


*I haven't actually read the Survey first-hand. I assume The Cannabist fact-checked.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Participation Trophy Woes

The image is taken from this article .  I'm a millennial, but an older one. I was born in 1984 which I believe is the beginning point of the millennial generation. I want to talk about a specific aspect of growing up millennial: participation trophies. These were somewhat regular in my childhood. Although they were not always guaranteed, they were around enough to matter in critical times during my development. I had some participation trophies, while I also had some other earned trophies. However, those participation trophies had an impact on the "earned" trophies. For me getting participation trophies taught me to devalue all trophies. When I was a junior or senior in high school, my mom found several awards I'd won shoved in a drawer in my bedroom. One such trophy was a writing award, another was my "Rookie of the Year" plaque I'd earned for diving into the Youth & Government program gung-ho even though it was my first year. I'd just jo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Deplin

Some may be surprised that I decided to write about this. It's personal stuff. But after a lot of thought, I decided to share anyway because I found something really beneficial to my health. Anyone who knows me really well knows that I have struggled with anxiety and depression at different times throughout my life. Anyone who sort of knows me has probably heard me talk about this and been surprised. You may fall into that second category now. I'm naturally a fairly nervous person. What may seem very small and insignificant things to some can send me into a tailspin. I may worry over a mistake on a work project or something stupid I said at a party for weeks after the incident. I get stomach aches when this happens. I give just as much attention to worrying about the future as I do the past, and it results in even more stomach aches. In my late twenties, I was pretty sick of feeling sick to my stomach from all this worrying all the time. So I started seeing a therapis...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Liebster Award

Thank you so much, Tasha Giacometto of TryAllMama.com for the Liebster award nomination! I'm excited about this opportunity to share more about myself and promote other awesome bloggers. The Liebster award is an award given to bloggers by other bloggers! It has German origins and has several definitions: dearest, lovely, pleasant, and valued, among many others. This award is a great way to make connections with fellow bloggers, and support new blogs or blogs with less than 1,000 followers! THE OFFICIAL RULES OF THE LIEBSTER AWARD Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog. Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.) Answer 11 questions from the Blogger that nominated you. Provide 10 random facts about yourself. Ask your nominees to answer 11 questi...
1 comment
Read more