This is not a hypothetical question but based on a real case. Clearly I am not going to identify the people involved but I am interested in wider Mumsnetter opinions, as I have come across different opinions relating to this.
A mother who lives abroad visits the UK to spend some time with her infant child's grandparents. The child is approx 16-19 months old, a delight, doing well and weaned.
Suddenly the mother is taken ill and rushed to hospital, leaving the child in the care of her grandparents. She's admitted to the High Dependency Unit. Naturally, the grandparents take the child to visit the mother in hospital. The mother is apparently in so much pain, doctors have put her on an IV drip for morphine.
On arrival at the hospital the mother insists on breast feeding her child, despite the fact that she has been on solid foods for weeks. This causes alarm amongst medical staff including the ward sister who make it very clear to her that she should not do that due to the high risk of her milk being contaminated with morphine. This reaction of course alarms the grandparents as well. The mother refuses to stop breast feeding and points out to the staff that they cannot stop her, and that it is her opinion that no harm will come to her child. The staff continue to protest, the mother continues to maintain her right to breast feed and that no harm will come of it.
Sometime later the mother is in another hospital in the same area. Again a High Dependency Unit. Once more, when her child is brought in to see her she immediately attempts to breast feed and medics raise objections because of the IV morphine. The mother, showing remarkable strength of spirit for someone in a HDU, refuses to desist.
Eventually the grandparents refuse to take the child in to visit the mother because they are so concerned about her behaviour. Social services become involved (it is assumed alerted by the hospital staff) but once the mother is made aware of their visits to the grandparents she seems to immediately recover, discharge herself and within 24 hours is leaving the UK to her residence in Europe with her child.
The mother is not a medic or medically qualified. The quantities of morhpine she was receiving are not known. I am not a medic, and whilst I am relatively confident that morphine passes easily from breast milk to the child, I could not say what the potential harm would be to that child.
The mother's main argument was that she did not want her milk to dry up - yet the child was 16-19 month old and weaned. Is this an acceptable argument? Even if the risk to the child was minimal was this an acceptable way to behave?
I'm a parent but not a mother. Obviously a Dad S. My view at the moment is that to expose a child to a risk of contamination by such a powerful drug as morphine when it was entirely unnecessary and against medical advice must border on a form of abuse.
Perhaps others would think that the mother's wish to maintain her milk supply, or her rights to breast feed and that any harm, in her view, would be minimal, justify her actions.
I'd be interested to hear what other Mumsnetters think.