Eating Poppy Seed Bagel Hours Before Giving Birth Reportedly Caused Mother To Fail Drug Test
When you’re pregnant, you quickly learn that a large selection of food and drink is suddenly on the no-go list.
Don’t drink alcohol. Limit your caffeine. No lunch meats or raw meats or undercooked meats.
But there’s one mom who wants everyone expecting a child to add a new one to the list: Poppy seed bagels.
It’s been joked about before — that you can fail a drug test if you eat poppy seeds. But it’s no laughing matter, and Elizabeth Dominguez of the Town of Tonawanda, New York, has the story to prove it.
She was expecting a baby, and at a time when she should have been focused on welcoming her new little one into the world, her urine sample tested positive for opiates. She’d gone into labor, a urine test had been run and suddenly she was on the wrong end of a lot of questions.
“I called my husband freaking out saying ‘how is this possible?’ I don’t do drugs,” Dominguez said, according to WKBW.
But then he asked her what she’d eaten that day, and they pieced it together. She’d had a sub and a bagel — and the bagel had been a poppy seed variety from Tim Hortons.
A clinical pharmacist at DENT, Dr. Michelle Rainka, said that it is, in fact, possible to test possible after eating something as seemingly harmless as a bagel — if it is covered in the questionable seeds like Dominguez’s was.
“In some cases eating a large amount of poppy seed such as the kind found in a bagel has been shown to produce low levels of morphine and codeine in the urine,” she said. “Potentially those seeds have not been washed and can contain that.”
Dr. Rainka said that even eating one poppyseed bagel can be enough to get the results that Dominguez experienced.
As a result of the test, Child Protective Services was called, and after the mom gave birth to her son, Carter, she was able to go home — but the hospital kept Carter, and watched him to see if he went through any withdrawals.
“I felt absolutely horrible,” Dominguez said. “I felt like a terrible mother leaving him. 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.”
The poppy seed bagel was reportedly determined to be the culprit, and mother and son were reunited. But the damage was done, and now Dominguez and her husband, Mark, are spreading the word about the hidden dangers of poppy seed bagels.
“I give Elizabeth Dominguez a ton of credit for going to the news and wanting to help educate expecting mothers and everyday people who might face a drug test at work,” Mark Dominguez wrote on Facebook on May 14. “Thank you to our true friends and family who encouraged us to share our story.”
“It’s been picked up by Hannah Buehler WKBW, People, New York Post, a German news station, a London news station and Inside Edition. If we can save at least 1 person from going through what we did it was well worth putting it out there.”
“Thank you all,” Elizabeth Dominguez wrote in a comment on her husband’s post. “Thank you for not judging me and having my back for everyone that knows me and knows I wouldn’t take drugs. I would never harm my children!”
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