Mother restricted access to newborn daughter because she smoked pot

A Chilean mother says a hospital is restricting her right to see her newborn daughter because she acknowledged smoking marijuana days before she gave birth.

Sindy Melany Ortiz said that during labour she told hospital officials that she had smoked pot to alleviate pain in one of her arms that had been broken.

Six hours after her daughter Luciana was born on Nov. 19, a social worker and a psychologist told her that the hospital had activated a security protocol and that her baby needed to be transferred to the neonatology unit. She said that since then, she’s only been allowed to see her for 2 1/2 hours a day and is not allowed to breast-feed her.

“The pain (in my arm) was too strong. We researched several methods to ease it and we took a decision as a family because we didn’t think it would affect the baby,’’ Ortiz said.