A nanny who was hired to look after a month-old girl secretly drank her employer’s breast milk after the baby fell asleep, a Taiwanese mother claimed.
Ms Lin, 27, from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, said she was ‘disgusted’ to find out the nanny, 58, had been drinking her breast milk without her permission on more than one occasion.
After being confronted by Ms Lin on September 12, the nanny admitted she had drunk Ms Lin’s breast milk but did not apologise, said the mother.
CCTV footage showed the 58-year-old nanny feeding Ms Lin’s daughter in her Taiwan home
Ms Lin said the nanny avoided the camera and drank the milk after putting the baby to sleep
The incident came to light after Ms Lin uploaded a post on Facebook on September 17, accusing the nanny of drinking the breast milk she had prepared for her children.
In the post, Ms Lin shared a video, which was captured by a security camera.
The video showed the nanny, wearing a face mask, feeding milk to a baby on a sofa. The carer then looked into the security camera before taking the baby out of the living room.
Although the clip did not show the nanny drinking the milk, Ms Lin claimed there were the moments before she drank the milk.
Ms Lin said the nanny put her daughter to sleep and drank the milk in a blind spot.
The 27-year-old, pictured with her son, decided to post the footage on her Facebook account
The angry mother told MailOnline that she hired the nanny to look after her newborn baby after giving birth to her second child.
Her son is two years old and her daughter was born in August.
The mother said she had hired the helper during her postpartum confinement, a one-month period during which new mothers must stay indoors according to the Chinese culture.
She said she had reminded the carer to keep any breast milk her daughter couldn’t finish and give it to her son.
On the afternoon of September 12, Ms Lin noticed there was about 450ml breast milk left in the bottle as she walked around in the house, according to the mother.
But a while later when she walked out to the living room again, she found the bottle to be empty, so she asked the nanny if the baby had finished all the milk.
The mother-of-two (left) said she had told the nanny to keep any milk her baby daughter couldn’t finish and give it to her son (right), but the nanny drank the milk herself in secret
‘She said yes but I couldn’t believe it, so I checked the CCTV,’ said Ms Lin.
The nanny later confessed to Ms Lin that she had drunk the leftover milk, said the mother, but did not apologise or explain why she had done so.
During an interview with the local media, Ms Lin claimed that the nanny said she ‘had only drunk a little’ and accused her of being ‘mean’ and ‘ungenerous’, according to Taiwan news website on.cc.
The nanny reportedly claimed she did not want to waste the milk, and her previous employers would give her ‘leftover breast milk’ to take home.
In explaining the matter, the nanny also said that she had anaemia, a common blood disorder caused by the reduction of red blood cells.
According to NHS, anaemia patients should drink less diary products such as milk, as calcium would make the body difficult to absorb iron.
Ms Lin has reported the incident to the local social welfare department.
A relevant official said the nanny’s behaviour was not deemed as misconduct, but the official called on all nannies to stick to professional ethics.