She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad Just Before Giving Birth. Then They Took Her Baby Away.
Hospitals use drug tests that return false positives from poppy seed bagels, decongestants and Zantac. Yet newborns are being taken from parents based on the results.
Susan Horton helps her children during playtime in their home in Cotati, California, in July 2024. Marissa Leshnov for The Marshall Project
Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now — pregnant with her fifth child — she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother.Then she ate a salad from Costco.It was her final meal before going to Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa, in northern California, to give birth in August 2022. It had been an exhausting pregnancy. Her family had just moved houses, and Horton was still breastfeeding her toddler. Because of her teenage son’s heart condition, she remained wary of COVID-19 and avoided crowded places, even doctor’s offices. Now, already experiencing the clawing pangs of contractions, she pulled out a frozen pizza and a salad with creamy everything dressing, savoring the hush that fell over the house, the satisfying crunch of the poppy seeds as she ate.
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