Minnesota Mom Used Laxatives In Attempt To Starve Her 9-Month-Old Baby To Death, Police Say

A Minnesota mom is accused of using MiraLAX to starve her 9-month-old son, even injecting a syringe full of the laxative into his IV while he was hospitalized.

Megan Lee Kafer, who was charged last week with trying to endanger the life of her child, had allegedly searched terms on her phone such as "how to make a baby really sick," "Miralax overdose," and "How to make a baby vomit," in the months leading up to her arrest, according to the Pioneer Press.

The 25-year-old mother's alleged acts were discovered after Kafer's "emaciated" son was hospitalized in July for "failure to thrive," the newspaper reported, citing court documents.

Those at the hospital began to suspect that Kafer may be harming her son after their efforts to help him gain weight were unsuccessful. They decided to move Kafer's son to a room monitored by video cameras at the end of July and caught Kafer injecting something into her child's feeding tube.

When she was confronted, Kafer reportedly began to shake and claimed she had only injected water into the feeding tube in an attempt to help her son gain weight, but tests would later reveal the syringe contained MiraLAX.

Two packages of the laxative were also recovered from her purse.

The young boy had been failing to gain weight, despite doctors' efforts, because his mother had been "denying him nutrition through a combination of disconnecting/diverting his feeds and administering water," a medical report said.

The medical staff who treated the boy claim Kafer had falsified and even caused symptoms of illness in her son, causing him to undergo numerous procedures and surgeries as doctors searched for answers.

A search history of her phone also showed that Kafer had allegedly repeatedly searched for ways to harm her child using laxatives in the months before her arrest. She'd also searched "Mom gets 20 years to life for poisoning son with salt," and "Salt child death," according to court documents.

According to the criminal compliant, Kafer's parental rights have been terminated, but her husband, Jacob Kafer told the Pioneer Press she still retained her rights.

He admitted his wife had struggled with some mental health issues in recent months but said she was now in counseling and was taking medication.

“We are trying to get the family back together in a way that is safe and healthy for everyone,” told the paper.

He doesn't believe she has Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome, a mental health condition where a caregiver intentionally inflicts harm or causes an illness in someone they are caring for.

“I am not saying there wasn’t an issue, there definitely was. … I just don’t think it’s (Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome),” Jacob Kafer said. “My wife was definitely not in a proper mental state, but to the extreme that they make it out to be and have laid out in the complaint, it's not quite like that,” he said.

Kafer has been charged by the Ramsey County Attorney's Office with felony child endangerment, according to the Winona Post.

[Photo: Ramsey County Sheriff's Office]