Mother Tests Positive For Opiates From Poppy Seed Bagel, Newborn Taken Away

A New York mother said her baby was taken from her just 24 hours after birth when she tested positive for opiates. The woman claimed she failed the test after eating a poppy seed-covered bagel.

Elizabeth Dominguez, a 29-year-old from Tonawanda, went into labor at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center around two weeks ago. Dominguez said she ate the bagel with cream cheese from Tim Horton’s in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda a few hours before heading to the hospital on May 1.

“I did a urine test and it came back that I tested positive for opiates,” she told local media WKBW. “I called my husband freaking out saying, ‘How is this possible?’ I don’t do drugs."

When her husband asked what she had eaten, Dominguez recalled she had a poppy-seed bagel and a sub sandwich. "He told me it must be from the bagel," she said.

When Dominguez gave birth, the hospital staff immediately began monitoring the child for signs of opioid withdrawal. They told Dominguez they were obliged to alert child protective services. Hospital reports later showed the mother tested positive because of the bagel.

“I felt absolutely horrible. I felt like a terrible mother leaving him," Dominguez said of her child. "I just want everyone to know that this could happen. It’s such a terrible thing and I don’t want it to happen to anyone."

Before being discharged, Dominguez was tested for a second time and she was eventually cleared.

“Everything came back negative because it was such a small dosage,” she said, with the final report confirming the initial test was from “ingestion of poppy seeds on a bagel.”

“Expectant moms are warned not to eat all kinds of things — why don’t they warn about poppy seeds?” she asked. “All of this could have been so easily prevented.”

The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment said, according to the New York Post, that until food manufacturers reduce morphine levels in poppy seeds, excessive consumption during pregnancy is advised against.