Breastfeeding and prescription drugs, is it harmful?
Posted
August 17, 2007 at
10:06 am by
Jessica
In Minneapolis, a mother is questioned by her 14-month-old’s guardian ad litem who is recommending that the mother discontinue breastfeeding as she takes a host of various prescription medications. The mother has subsequently become a champion for breastfeeding advocacy saying that her doctor recommended she breastfeed and supports her decision.
According to reports, the mother takes Topamax, used to treat epileptic seizures and migraines, Baclofen for muscle spasms, Ambien occasionally to help her sleep, and Tylenol 3.
She also cites a letter from Thomas Hale, author of “Medications and Mothers’ Milk,” who writes, “They [the medications] are basically all fine, particularly in a 14-month-old infant who can metabolize drugs as good if not better than an adult.”
Even if a 14-month old can metabolize all those drugs, should they? Is it healthy? You likely wouldn’t directly give an infant any of those medications. Is there zero risk? And if not, doesn’t that go against a core belief of breastfeeding vs. formula, the tenet that formula feeding increases the risk of medical complications?
The courts are insinuating that there is information that the public doesn’t know about this case and urging people not to make assumptions. The father is seeking custody of the baby and although I’m no legal expert, typically guardian ad litem’s are appointed when the custodians of the child have been proven unfit to act on the child’s behalf.
UPDATE on new FDA warning issued for nursing mothers taking codeine:
Nursing mothers who take codeine should watch their infants for increased sleepiness or other signs of overdose, U.S. government health officials warned Friday.
The Food and Drug Administration warning of the rare but serious side effect was prompted by a 2006 report of the death of a nursing infant whose mother was given codeine for episiotomy pain.
Genetic testing later showed the woman’s body converted the codeine to morphine more rapidly and completely than in other people. That led to higher-than-expected morphine levels in her breast milk.
While the rapid conversion of codeine to morphine is a very rare side effect in some mothers, it can result in high and unsafe levels of the latter drug in the blood and breast milk, the FDA said in an alert.
Tags: breast-feeding, breastfeeding-advocacy, Carter-Burton, Christa-Burton, codeine-risks, drugs-and-breastfeeding, Health, Medications-and-Mothers-Milk, Minneapolis, Thomas-Hale |
11 Responses to “Breastfeeding and prescription drugs, is it harmful?”
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately in an effort to remove commercial messages, irrelevancies, excessive foul language, racist/sexist/hateful comments, spoofed/cloaked IPs and/or personal attacks and will be edited/deleted at our discretion. Thank you for your patience.
1. Petulant Pixie said:
August 17, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
It seems like a lot of medications. Even if they’re deemed safe to pass to the baby via breastmilk, it seems like a lot. Maybe at 14 months the risks of the medications are greater than the benefits of breastfeeding?
I’m the kind of mother who hasn’t taken Nyquil since before becoming pg with my 2 y.o. though, because I don’t want to be too zonked out in case she needs me in the middle of the night (and even at 2, she does sometimes). I’m too afraid of falling too deeply asleep and not hearing her, or not being able to get fully awake and stumbling while I’m carrying her or making a bad decision because I’m not fully with it. So there is NO WAY I would be taking Rx sleep aids with a 14 month old, nor narcotic pain relievers. When I HAD to take narcotics (after my c/s and after my hernia operations), dh knew he was on full baby alert. But, does this woman have live-in help for when she’s under the influence of these medications. That, I think is more alarming than the breastfeeding business.
2. Petulant Pixie said:
August 17, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
Well, those recommendations came out TODAY? So, the guardian ad litem couldn’t have known about that when he/she made this recommendation. But, it sure isn’t going to help this woman’s case!
I really don’t care. I can’t claim to be any sort of breastfeeding advocate since I think that my kids and most babies do fine on formula. It’s hard to work up any amount of outrage over a 14 month old being forced (gasp) to eat the same stuff my own kids ate at that age. Sorry, if it’s good enough for my own children it’s good enough for anyone else’s kids too. And if someone thinks it’s not, then that’s kind of a criticism of what I fed my kids and I can’t get in line with their thinking. So, whatever, it’ll be a big hullaballoo and everyone will all get in a tizzy over it and I can think of ten bizillion real injustices that could use the publicity and emotion instead. That’s the sad part.
3. Jessica said:
August 17, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
True, but my guess is that it’s more about what you mentioned in your first response. The guardian ad litem was saying (in the cited article) that the public doesn’t know the whole story, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some sort of chemical dependency involved, ya know?
4. DrBookgrrl said:
August 18, 2007 @ 4:39 pm
I find it hard to believe that any pediatrician would support a woman in a bid to exclusively breastfeed a 14 month old. It’s more than likely that the baby just has breast milk at bedtime or something like that. And while I don’t condone taking a bunch of drugs and then nursing your kid, do we even know if she takes these medications on a regular basis? I have a scrip for migraines. I’ve had one migraine since my 5 month old arrived, and I took the pill and followed the recommendations of my pediatrician on what to do for my daughter, and lo and behold, we’re all okay.
I guess I just don’t see what there is to debate here. We don’t even know anything close to the full story, by the sound of it. Maybe this is a woman who knows she’s going to lose her child and is desperate to bond with her before that happens. On the other hand, maybe she’s an ignorant junkie and doesn’t really care if her baby is absorbing these medications through her milk. We have no idea.
5. Petulant Pixie said:
August 19, 2007 @ 9:52 am
I have no idea what’s going on really with the case. I do know that because it involves breastfeeding (even if like you suggested, just bedtime nursing) that everyone’s all up in arms about it.
I DO support a parent’s right to do as she sees fit with her own kids. I DO support a mother’s right to breastfeed as long as she chooses. I can understand this woman feeling threatened because a GAL has deemed something she’s doing to be not in her child’s best interest and that would be frightening to anyone.
Where I basically tune out is when it becomes a breastfeeding issue and not a parenting issue. I can’t get all wrapped up in something that given the decision *I* would just have stopped bfeeding and/or not taken the meds anyway (because like I said, I think that you shouldn’t be taking meds that make you groggy when you’re the sole caregiver in the house whether breastfeeding or not). She’s got Hale and Jack Newman and everyone else to make this a breastfeeder’s issue, so that’s not me.
I hope the decision that’s made IS in the best interest of the child and not made because of ignorance or politics.
6. Michelle said:
September 8, 2007 @ 11:34 pm
I agree that no one knows how often this mom is even taking these meds. Of course the Topamax is daily, since I take it myself, but the others would be as needed. And some people aren’t zonked out from codeine (I’m not). I’m also 6′1″. And I never take it, so it’s not a tolerance issue. Besides, we’re not talking about a newborn. This kid is old enough to handle quite a bit, even if it does pass into the milk in nanograms.
But it all boils down to people hating the idea of a woman nursing a child who is “old enough to ask for it”. People can’t stand it. They also might feel inferior because maybe breastfeeding didn’t work for them, and it did work for this mom. So of course, she’s gotta stop because to them it’s gross to nurse a kid who can walk.
And dad may be trying to get back at mom by hitting her where it hurts–by stopping the nursing because any mom who continues past a year is dedicated. So instead of him being a real man and wanting what’s best for his child, he has to kick mom in the teeth and play dirty. That’s probably why there was a guardian ad litem. Someone to remain unbiased, supposedly. I guess it depends on the laws of the state. But when you get someone who’s uninformed, then it’s disaster. Plus, you also never know how well-connected dad is. Justice is never really blind. And with all of the divorce stuff, maybe she’s getting more migraines than usual and having to take meds more often while still not harming the child.
Also, there is sooooo much misinformation about what is safe to take when you’re nursing. Docs will give a mom Prozac while pregnant and then tell her not to breastfeed while she’s on it. It’s actually the other way around!!! They don’t learn jack sh*t about nursing in medical school.
7. Michelle said:
September 8, 2007 @ 11:43 pm
It’s funny that no one worries about the pesticides and corn syrup (a HUGE contributer to obesity) or bovine hormones in formula. Or the synthetic estrogens and genetically modified organisms in soy-based formulas. But let a nursing mother pop an antidepressant or a pain pill, and it’s a problem. These double standards are appalling.
8. Michelle said:
September 9, 2007 @ 12:07 am
Regarding what’s really going on that the public doesn’t know about???
“Who knows what the guardian discovered during the course of the investigation?” Toogood said. “There’s usually more going on in these cases than is publicly available.”
Pure speculation on the part of the overseer of the guardian ad litem program. Someone wanting to create a story where there isn’t one, perhaps? Or could it be that he doesn’t want any doubt cast on the abilities of his underlings. So shift the focus to the “drugged-up” mother trying to poison her baby.
The fact that the mother had both full legal and physical custody speaks volumes. Judges usually only award that when dad is unfit or a deadbeat or a cheating bastard. He’s probably tired of paying child support, which is a common stunt they pull. So now he is going after mom for custody. Sounds a lot like this whole breastfeeding/meds issue is purely based on REVENGE.
9. Petulant Pixie said:
September 9, 2007 @ 11:20 am
Formula doesn’t make a baby drowsy, which was one of the things mentioned with the meds she was taking. Formula doesn’t cause potential brain damage or stunted growth, which can happen with some medications taken by a breastfeeding mother. Yes, medications can be very serious.
“Cheating Bastard” doesn’t address how good of a father he is. That just speaks against him as a husband.
We don’t know all the details, but like I said, I question her judgement just by taking all those medications when she is the sole caregiver for an infant–breastfeeding or not. *I* would not take anything that limited my reflexes or ability to fully wake up when I am the only one in the house responsible for the baby, which it seems she is.
I find it ironic that just because she’s breastfeeding the whole lactivist army is summoned to defend her. Maybe she’s a bad mother? Maybe she takes those drugs a LOT more often than admitted. Maybe an incident happened. Nobody knows, but it’s funny how it’s split down the middle with pro-bfeeders having a knee-jerk defense reaction and everyone else saying, “Hmmmm, don’t know, need more information.”
10. Michelle said:
September 9, 2007 @ 8:15 pm
I admit to having a knee-jerk reaction myself because I had to defend every single time I breastfed any of my children. I had so much hostility shot at me for not formula feeding (this was in 1996 and 1998). I kept my mouth shut then, because if I had defended myself, I would have been ostracized by family and friends.
But the meds she is taking don’t cause the harm that people are so worried about. If she was on lithium maybe or vincristine, I could see the reason for concern. Drowsiness in the kid from Ambien? Maybe in a newborn. It’s not like she’s on some radioactive meds that will make the kid glow in the dark. Misinformation is so toxic. And not everyone has the same response the meds. What sedates one person into a stupor may only slightly tire another.
But as I mentioned, I think there is an issue with dad that is the real problem. And regarding his parenting: if he was so great, then why didn’t he get legal custody of the child too?
And yes, she could be popping pills all day, but once again, it’s the old issue of “you’re breastfeeding so you’re not supposed to ‘contaminate’ your body in any way”.
I realize that there are boob nazis out there who are horrors to deal with everytime they see a woman formula-feeding. But not every breastfeeder is like that. Some of us have had to fight tooth and nail to not be treated like crack-whores because we breastfeed.
11. Petulant Pixie said:
September 9, 2007 @ 8:34 pm
And some of us had to fight tooth and nail not to be treated like crackwhores becaue we formula-fed.
The LC when I had my son (in 1994) was verbally abusive to me when I failed at breastfeeding and chose to bottlefeed instead.
In 1999, my son (then 4) took classes at The Little Gym. There was a mother of a girl in my son’s class and she and I had newborns. She kept asking me, “What’s wrong with your baby? Is she sick? Oh, that’s right, babies on formula always look a little sickly, don’t they? Or exclaim, “Peeew! I smell a formula poop! I’m so glad breastfed babies’ poops don’t smell like that, I don’t think I could stand it!” And many other comments just like that.
There are biases against both sides. Neither side gets off easier. Except of course, the breastfeeders have LLL, WHO and every doctor on their side when things get sticky. All we have are defenses about why we couldn’t breastfeed.
Some of the medications that the woman is taking have been determined to have potential side effects on a baby. Yes, I realize that this child is 16 months, not an infant, but if she’s been taking these medications for all this time–from when the baby WAS an infant all the way through now, and the child is exhibiting delays, then there is nothing wrong with having this reviewed.
Who knows why the father wasn’t given joint custody. Maybe she fought for sole custody because she was breastfeeding, and it was granted. That certainly has happened before!