Caught Off Gaurd By A Profound Kinda Crazy!

One day a little while back I had this encounter with a parent that I feel is worth sharing. It was the end of a rather uneventful but long day, and I was ready to check out and go home. The nurse practitioner informed me that one of our mothers was here and wanted to speak to me. I had only been seeing the baby for one day, so I was not fully up to speed on the social situation. The NNP told me that the mother who had been transferred from another hospital, and had two other children that she did not have custody of (Major red flag here!) likely due to some poor decision making in her past. She told me that the mother had spoken to her attorney who had told her that we could not do a drug screen on her breast milk. She wanted to have a discussion with me. Oh Joy! Just what I wanted to get into at the end of this long day!
So I took a deep breath and began whipping myself into a frenzy. "We have to do whatever is in your baby's best interest." "The only way to ensure that we are doing the right thing for your baby is to test your breast milk or use formula." Yep, I was steeling myself for a fight.
I approached the bedside and introduced myself to a somewhat large, wild eyed mother who spoke very dramatically as she addressed me. Standing behind her was her rail-thin mother in a tie-died shirt, denim jacket, with a bandanna around her forehead (Janis Joplin would be proud of her legacy). The mother stated that her lawyer had told her that breast milk could not be screened for drugs. Other people had told her that it could. She wanted to know who was right. It slowly occurred to me that she didn't want to argue the legality of testing her breast milk, she just wanted to know if it was technically possible.
She then launched into a very long and somewhat entertaining attack on the government agency responsible for removing her other children from her custody. Her lawyer wanted us to "keep her baby in the hospital as long as possible. Because that way they can't get their hands on him!" She went on to tell me that there was a big "black market" for babies in her home county and she had fallen victim to it. It was all a massive government conspiracy against her (she was really getting worked up and her mother was nodding and expounding and cussing). She even told me that the ethnicity of the baby's father would make this baby particularly desirable for this government run "black market". It was really pretty surreal standing there taking it all in. Somehow I managed to keep it together. You see, I'm equipped to handle crazy, I just wasn't prepared for this particular kind of crazy. It requires listening to the delusion without feeding it or openly challenging it. I ultimately reassured the mother that we would be able to screen her breast milk for the presence of illicit drugs, and that while we couldn't keep her baby in the hospital in order to "keep 'em from gettin' their hands on him", he would likely need to stay for at least a few weeks for medical reasons.
What a way to end a long and uneventful day!