Mom Busted for Drinking While Breastfeeding

An Arkansas mom out with her family at a bar-restaurant wound up in jail after a waitress called police to say she was breastfeeding and drinking. Officers arrested Tasha Adams and charged her with child endangerment, though the deputy city attorney in Conway, Ark., dropped the charge last week, reports ABC News. “I did drink. I did breastfeed,” Adams tells ABC. "I didn’t know it was illegal. If I knew it was illegal, I wouldn’t have done it.” It's actually not illegal under Arkansas law, but the officers at the scene used the child-endangerment charge to take her into custody.

Adams says she had two beers in about 90 minutes, but a waitress (not Adams' server) suspected she had more than that, and more than just beer. She eventually called police. That waitress, incidentally, was fired the following week. At the Stir, Adriana Velez has mixed feelings about the case, given how unclear the medical evidence is on the subject. Most moms she knows follows guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics to wait two hours after having a drink, but "it's still alarming that breastfeeding while drinking would land a mother in jail." (More Tasha Adams stories.)