An Ohio mother claims that the majority of her children were taken away from her after a doctor’s visit, citing her holistic lifestyle as a reason for the removal.
In late January, Lasha Cauthen, mother of seven, took her 10-day-old twins to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for a check-up and to nail down a primary care provider. During the visit, she claims the doctor raised concerns about her baby’s weight and commented on her manner of living.
“She began speaking with me because I am holistic,” Cauthen told WXIX, noting that her doctor said her newborns are healthy. “I don’t get vaccinations. We don’t vaccinate. We don’t use any modern medications unless necessary.”
Court documents obtained by the news station suggested that both of her children lost weight since the day they were born — both more than 10 percent. The doctor recommended that Cauthen leave her children under hospital care, but she refused.
“She said, ‘I’ll give you an option of coming back in a few days to be weighed.’ I told her, ‘I have a scale, and I will do it on my own, by myself,” Cauthen explained. “Like, you can’t tell me what to do. She automatically felt threatened, I guess in that sense, and she decided to threaten me with Child Protective Services.”
A report was made to Hamilton County Job and Family Services that day. Per the outlet, another concern that came to light was that Cauthen turned down a “lactation consult,” but she said she hired Wendy McHale just days later.
The lactation consultant verified with WXIX that she was working with Cauthen on breastfeeding and saw positive results with the twins’ weight. McHale even reached out to her caseworker to tell her about the progress.
Despite this, family services representatives said they were removing the newborns from the household because they wanted them to gain more weight and put them on baby formula. Cauthen opposed this due to being vegan, the outlet reported. After hours in the hospital, she was informed the other children will be taken as well.
“I’m distraught here in this moment. I’m not understanding what is going on. I don’t even understand how they’re legally able to kidnap our children,” Cauthen told the outlet.
While at the hospital, Cauthen reached out to a suicide crisis hotline to vent, but it later backfired when the operator started to ask if she was a gun owner. She admitted the weapon was in her car, according to WXIX. The hospital was placed on lockdown.
Cauthen was later handcuffed and sent to an hours’-long mental health evaluation, which she cleared. Months later, she is only allowed supervised visits with six of her children and will continue to fight to get them back, per the report.
“It’s like human trafficking. That’s what this is because when they put my newborns in foster care, they assumed I was not going to fight because most women don’t fight,” she said.
