Baby Becomes Briefly Underweight, Mom Loses Custody for Five Months

It
took five months
for Florida mother Sarah Markham to regain custody of her new
son after the state removed the baby for being briefly
underweight.

The ordeal
started last June, when Markham took her 12-day-old son to a
doctor and found he was dehydrated and had lost 10 percent of his
weight. This is not uncommon for newborns. The pediatrician told
Markham she would need to start supplementing the boy’s breastfed
diet with a milk-based baby formula.

Markham had no problem with adding formula, but as a Seventh Day
Adventist, for whom a vegetarian or vegan diet is a part of
religious beliefs, she didn’t want to feed her son a milk-based
product. Upon telling this to the doctor, he ordered her to take
the baby to the hospital, where staff could give the infant the
dairy formula.

Markham instead went to Whole Foods, bought a soy-based baby
formula to supplement her son’s diet, and contacted another doctor
for a second opinion—not exactly the actions of someone willfully
neglecting their child’s health. In fact, Markham was feeding her
son the new formula when local police showed up to place her under
arrest. 

It seems that when Markham didn’t show up at the hospital, her
doctor had called the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office. Police
officers arrived at Markham’s apartment, arrested her for “child
neglect without bodily harm”, and handed her son over to the
Seminole Child Protective Services. Markham “was accused of
refusing to give her infant non-vegan formula even though he was
dehydrated,” ABC News reports, as if dairy-based formula has some
sort of magical hydrating properties that soy-based formula does
not. 

So for the “good” of this newborn baby, he was separated from
his mother for the first five months of his life. (The kid may wind
up with an attachment disorder, but hey, at least he was spared the
indignities of hydrating on breast milk and soy-based baby
formula!). Markham finally regained custody of her son Wednesday,
after a judge threw out the Seminole County Child Protective
Services’ claims. As a condition of the child’s return, Markham
must now meet regularly with a state-approved
pediatrician.