Colorado Springs – A 2-month- old said to have ingested a dangerously high amount of alcohol was released from the hospital Monday, a day after she was admitted.
KRDO-Channel 13 reported Sunday that the girl had a blood-alcohol content of 0.364, more than four times the level at which an adult would be considered a drunken driver in Colorado.
Colorado Springs Police Lt. Rafael Cintron would not confirm the blood-alcohol-content figure.
He said the baby was taken to the hospital about 3:30 a.m. Sunday and that no one has been arrested in the case.
Cintron said he could not comment on how the child was poisoned or what prompted the mother to take the child to the hospital.
An online blood-alcohol-content calculator shows that a 15-pound person who consumed 2 ounces of 80-proof (40 percent) alcohol would have a BAC of .385.
But experts said it is impossible to pinpoint with any certainty how alcohol impacts infants’ BAC due to metabolic differences between children and adults and a lack of research on the topic, due to the ethical concerns of providing alcohol to babies.
“There is no way to correlate blood-alcohol content with alcohol consumption in a child,” said Chris Valentine, spokesman for Memorial Hospital.
Dr. Alvin Bronstein, medical director of Rocky Mountain Poison Center, said that when children ingest alcohol, it is often toddlers who drink rubbing alcohol or perfume.
In October, a 17-month-old in Erie drank wine, raising his blood-alcohol content to 0.195. His mother, Lisa Shattuck, 38, was cited on suspicion of criminally negligent child abuse.
In adults, the legal limit for driving drunk in Colorado is 0.08.
Brenda Burnett, a registered nurse and lactation expert for the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment, said there are four ways infants can ingest alcohol. It is added to their baby formula; delivered through the breast milk of a mother who has been drinking; taken in over-the-counter cold and cough medicine; or applied directly to the gums for teething.
Burnett said an old wives’ tale says alcohol can help calm a colicky baby.
“It does cause drowsiness,” Burnett said. “It’s not recommended at all.”
Infants who ingest alcohol can become hypoglycemic, which means their blood sugar drops.
“They have the signs and symptoms just as a diabetic would have if their blood sugar drops. They can get tremors, they can be jittery; they can be lethargic,” Burnett said. “The other thing, it is a central nervous system depressant. Just as if an adult drinks too much, we worry about alcohol poisoning and people stop breathing. The same thing can happen in babies. It can lead to respiratory depression and a low oxygen level in their bodies.”
Less than 2 percent of the alcohol ingested by a mother is passed onto a child through breast milk, Burnett said.
“There’s not been a lot of research on this because it happens infrequently,” Burnett said.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
