The truth is that most medication does enter breast milk. However, many of them do not affect the baby's health (at least not in the doses that end up in your milk) [1].
When prescribing medication to a nursing mother, doctors will weigh the pros with cons.
They consider the following:
- How important is the drug for the mother's health?
- Is the child exclusively breastfed or already on a complementary diet?
- How old is the child? Do they suffer from any illness?
Some medications can be replaced with safer options. In other cases, mothers may need to create a supply of expressed breast milk to rely on and extract and discard the milk produced after taking the medication (anywhere from six to 30 hours, depending on the medication). Other types of medication do not affect the baby at all. In the case of painkillers, for example, doctors are more cautious the younger the baby is [2].
You can get up-to-date information on the risks and safety of different groups of medications while breastfeeding at the Infant Risk Center .
