Whatever your poison abstaining during pregnancy is a must but many need to be educated on this subject. I'm sure Planed Parenthood does a great job and must be protected and even expanded, I hope someday all will come to this conclusion.
Could help with the colicky ones. You never know.
2
I smoked during two pregnancies
Both children had near perfect apgar scores at birth.
Hit every milestone - talk walk eat sleep poop exceptionally well.
Maybe finally a study will exonerate mothers. I have known many who smoked marijuana during their pregnancy and their children are all in excellent shape. If you’re going through nausea or depression during pregnancy marijuana is a lifesaver.
There is no factual proof marijuana hurts babies at all.
1
Duh.
Aside from marijuana in breast milk, I'd like to see a study on the effects of second-hand marijuana smoking on children (and adults). I believe a big reason why the tobacco wars succeeded -- at least for a while -- were because they showed damage to kids and people (e.g. bar tenders) who chose not to smoke but were involuntarily exposed to it. I have prescribed medical marijuana to some patients before but I do not enjoy smelling it when I am ordinarily out and about. I would be esp. incensed if it turned out other people's bad habits (and yes I will call it that if there is no medical indication for it) might affect my health.
A scientific answer is decades of more work. All we have now is anecdotal evidence from the mothers who smoked pot while nursing or pregnant. That evidence is pretty straightforward. No observable effect from many thousands of cases..
Having lived in a West Coast town during the 70's, I knew many pregnant mothers who smoked pot fairly regularly, and continued to do so while they nursed. The children of these moms are now adults. They are cognitively and emotionally sound, independent, and holding responsible jobs. I haven't seen any evidence of the pot affecting their development negatively. I'm not advocating for pot smoking during pregnancy and nursing, just saying that we should not be jumping to conclusions.
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Why do it? It’s not necessary and we don’t know the consequences.
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Some things are obvious.
7
We have a friend who is fanatical about only feeding her kids organic stuff, avoiding "chemicals", etc. She also smokes copious amounts of weed (such that I can smell it in the house at all times), including when they were babies. I've never really understood how she reconciles these two things. But sometimes it takes an official "study" to make people realize the logical and obvious: marijuana has many benefits, but it is a powerful drug that's not appropriate for children.
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For many years I taught childbirth and newborn care classes. Many women I worked with smoked during and after their pregnancy. In fact I believe the many more pregnant and new moms smoke than anyone would imagine (and have been doing so for decades). I saw no effect on those infants and know a many who have grown up to be successful young adults. What I would like to see is a larger discussion of the over prescription of pain killers like OxyContin to new mothers (yes, even breastfeeding ones), a trend I find frightening on many levels. There are so many toxins in the environment— lead in our water, roundup in our cereal— I find it hard to believe that trace amounts of marijuana in breast milk is a public health crisis serious enough to outweigh the benefits gained from breastfeeding.
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Yes, I accidentally got my 9-month old daughter high. I'm a terrible mom. I used no alcohol or marijuana throughout my pregnancy and during breast feeding months. But my husband, on the cusp of starting a new job and moving to another country, really wanted me to have a single joint with him to help us both relax. I finally gave in, but planned everything carefully: pumping a bottle of drug-free breastmilk, breastfeeding my daughter and putting her to bed, before I took a hit.
About 5 minutes after I took a short puff, my daughter woke up and started crying. I tried to give her the bottle, but she refused it, and I figured that the cannabis from one puff probably hadn't entered my breast milk yet, so I breastfed her again to try to put her to sleep.
Bad mistake: my daughter sat for the next 3 hours completely quiet, transfixed by the lovely fire in our fireplace. I spent the entire night beside her in a panic, monitoring her breathing.
Now she's finished her Master's, travelled the world, and rejects all drugs. She turned out perfect, but I'll never get over the memory of being such a terrible mom.
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We who were born in the 1950s & before, whose mothers didn't abstain from smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol, we have turned out pretty darn well as a generation. The current culture of fear astounds me & the judgment of what others do with their pregnancies & onward, is appalling.
Just one more way to exert control over women & their families.
16
I was born in 1940; my mother was born in 1920. She breast Fed me, and continued to drink heavily. She came in after a party, fed me, put me back to bed. I didn't wake up the next morning and had a heavy alcohol breath. My father rushed me to the DR and was told I would sleep it off. My mother stopped breast feeding me rather than give up drinking!
My mother’s smoking negatively affected me and my five brothers. Each of us has respiratory problems attributable to her smoking.
1
Ya think?
Please tell me this research will go deeper and teach us something a bit less obvious.
There are plenty of antiemetics with no long term side effects. They are old drugs and they make you drowsy, but they are safe for mom and baby.
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Gee, ya think?!
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Perhaps we can finally do some sensible medical research on the effects of cannabis without having to book a trip to Amsterdam.
Tying the effects of selected substances upon breast milk certainly drives headlines and dramatic, fearful, conversation.
But for babies who are having trouble sleeping through the night, or teething, the market shelves seem to offer plenty of unnatural alternatives to alleviate the pain. What are the effects of those?
What if a mother eats non-organic food, or fast-food (which are subjects of their own debates and selectively-funded studies)?
How do the various alternatives that are presumably "OK" (for lack of information to the contrary), or "FDA-approved" and advertised, compare to the effects of traces of cannabis in breast milk?
9
Cannabinoids also naturally occur in breast milk, but I assume this has different molecular structure than THC- still, would have liked to seen this mentioned!
9
Holy cow! Scientific research reveals traces of a substance that was consumed by a person... to actually linger in the human body for days afterward.
I guess research has to start somewhere.
12
A friends mother smoke weed while she was pregnant back in the day. My friend is a highly successful well regarded physician.
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@mt For all we know, he or she would have been more successful than (s)he currently is, but for the smoking.
It does not follow from your story that a different mother would also have a successful baby if she were to have smoked.
It is also the case that the MJ available today is much stronger, so even if this fact was true a generation ago, it may not be tru now.
7
Well, that’s a scientific study! One mother-child story is only that, one story.
My sister smoked pot before, during and after her pregnancies. Both children are on the autism spectrum.
4
Would have even been more successful? What kind of metric is that? It seems that being a well respected physician is pretty successful. What would be beyond that?
Really? We need physicians to tell us that?
8
There are endogenous cannabinoids which exist in breastmilk whether or not cannabis is ever even present. The “evidence” which suggests that cannabis itself is actually toxic does not exist.
It’s just a flower. Traces of cannabis have been found in remnants from nearly every ancient civilization. Prohibition is supposed to be over.
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@ubique Just like opium is the juice from the opium poppy.
1
During pregnancy and nursing a woman should abstain from all sorts of otherwise innocuous things including soft cheeses, alcohol (even in strict moderation), I believe some seafood is also off-limits.
Not ingesting cannabis should be an absolute no-brainer!
16
The continuing support by the DEA to keep marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug with no known medical value has become a criminal act of self-preservation. Research all over the world has confirmed medical value, and much more research is what needs to be encouraged, rather than throwing up roadblocks. Also it is important to recognize the difference between psychoactive THC and CBDs (cannabinoids). I grow and juice leaves for their CBDs. As long as you do not heat them, the THC will be latent, giving one all the medicinal value without the high or the need to ingest smoke.
5
If seems obvious that all intoxicants should be avoided during pregnancy. There's also a huge difference between how cannabis (the actual proper botanical name) is produced, ie. organically in pure soil or with chemical fertilizers etc. How about a study on the affects of all the toxic herbicides, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, plastics and chemicals that leach into our air, water and food? How about cosmetics, soaps and shampoos? The American (if not global) policy that chemicals have to be proved toxic before they're banned is one of the great crimes of the modern era. How about having to prove a chemical is totally safe before it can be added anything or introduced into the environment?
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@Michael
Yup, I was a little disappointed to learn a couple weeks back that I've probably been getting trace amounts of Roundup ™ with my Quaker Oats ™ the past 25 years. Now I've switched to organic oats--hope it helps.
9
I am a proponent of legalization of marijuana, but I am convinced that it is not a benign substance. Perhaps NOW the research (that should have been conducted, many years ago) can commence, in earnest. We have yet to even scratch the surface, when it comes to determining both the health benefits of marijuana....and the risks.
8
Shocker! (Sarcasm) THC is fat soluble, so who could have guessed it could cross the placenta and be secreted in breast milk. Rule of thumb - most things like cross the blood brain barrier will likely impact the fetus. Glad money is being spent to iron out these details, however, as the war on drugs has severely restricted our ability to understand MJ and it’s potential benefits/risks to adults and unborn & breastfeeding babies. NYT - keep working hard to keep the public informed! We really appreciate you all!
1