Taking medicines while breast feeding
If a breast-feeding mother is prescribed any medicine, the fact that she is breast-feeding
has to be taken into account. Many types of medicines do find their way, through
the mother's bloodstream, into breast-milk. This means the baby will suckle the medicine.
There are three broad questions:
· Will the medicine affect the taste of the milk?
· Does the baby need this medicine?
· What effect does the medicine have on the baby?
In the section below we have attempted to cover as wide a range of common and not-so-common
medicines as possible in answering these questions.
There are types of medicines that are clearly incompatible with breast-feeding. This
is usually because of the potential of harming the baby. A few types change the taste
of the milk, something that may lead to the baby declining the breast and consequently
going hungry.
Many other types of medicine are perfectly safe for the baby and have no effect on
the taste of the milk.
For some, the effect is unknown and the advice is to stop breast-feeding, at least
for the duration of the medication course.
Any breast-feeding mother should read the instruction leaflet accompanying the medicine,
be it prescription or over-the-counter. If that information is missing (and if it
is not covered here), then the doctor should be asked to provide this vital information.
Antibiotics and breast-feeding
Most types of medicine do get into breast-milk. The quantities that get there range
from insignificant to concentrated. Of course, some of these drugs are completely
harmless to the baby. A breast-feeding woman should always check the safety of any
drug, be it prescription or "over the counter", for compatibility with breast-feeding.
We shall attempt to discuss the most common categories of drugs below.
Difference between adults and babies when it comes to medicine
Part of the reason why safe medicines for adults could be harmful to babies is the
fact that a baby's metabolism is still immature and therefore its ability to break
down chemicals is not up to scratch. This means an otherwise innocent drug can accumulate
to dangerous concentrations in the baby's system.
Antibiotics taken by a pregnant mother
This is a vast group of drugs: some of which are quite harmless, some potentially
harmful and others outright dangerous and therefore contraindicated.
v Penicillins: this group of antibiotics is harmless for use with breast-feeding.
Penicillins appear in very low concentrations in breast-milk. Moreover, even high
concentrations appear to be harmless to babies. The same applies to Cephalosporins,
Erythromycin and Trimethoprim. If antibiotics are prescribed to a breast-feeding
mother, she should check whether they fall into any of these groups. If they do,
there is no need to worry about taking them.
v Metronidazole: popularly known as Flagyl®. It is considered to be safe. Metronidazole,
however, has a reputation of rendering breast-milk bitter. The baby may therefore
not be too keen.
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