Being told you ‘can’t breastfeed while you take this medication’ can be a deeply emotional situation, where a mother faces choosing between her health and how she feeds her baby.
We know needing to use medications shortens overall duration of breastfeeding, often because of overly cautious information given by healthcare providers.
Medications and Breastfeeding
Resources medics check such as the BNF give generalised advise, which errs on the side of caution and may not represent the most up-to-date guidance and thinking about medications and breastfeeding.
Ultimately it is very difficult to carry out testing on breastfeeding mothers, but we know there are, in fact, very few medications that are not safe to take. If you do need to take a medication while breastfeeding, even if the first choice isn’t suitable there is almost always an alternative.
Thanks to Stacey from @feedeatspeak for writing this post with me. We believe that as well as listening and communicating with your medical team, you can be your own advocate.
We encourage you to look up the safety profile of medications using the resources below, print out leaflets and present and discuss the evidence with your doctor.
Common medications that are perfectly safe while breastfeeding:
- Painkillers like paracetamol, ibuprofen, even oral morphine solution (oramorph) although beware of drowsiness
- Most antibiotics
- Asthma inhalers
- Antihistamines
- Most creams and ointments
- Recent advice also notes mothers can have general anaesthetic and breastfeed as normal as soon as they are awake after surgery. Take care co-sleeping that evening.
Top resources to check for medication safety:
- Pharmacists are of course the experts in medication safety and interactions and they should be your first port of call, either in hospital or in the community.
- You can also ask for information by calling the medicines information service which is provided with medications you receive from hospital.
- Breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk has leaflets on common scenarios like IVF medications and breastfeeding, anxiety/ depression medications and more.
- Infant Risk Center website (infantrisk.com) has some excellent articles which review evidence and guidelines. This is mainly useful for healthcare providers.
- However they also have 2 apps including Mommymeds, aimed at mothers, so you can scan and search medications yourself
- Lactmed – this is another commonly used website for healthcare professionals to check websites
- GP Infant Feeding Network
Avoid just googling or checking inserts in packets of medications. Advice given is often overly cautious and not based on current safety evidence.
What was your experience while breastfeeding?