Mothers who are new mothers often focus all their attention on their babies. This is a job that is unpaid 24 hours a day but full of happiness and happiness for mothers.
During breastfeeding, Mothers often ignore their health and have minor physical problems. At this time, many mothers’ first choice is not to cure their diseases as soon as possible, but to choose not to affect the baby’s food rations, worried that taking medicine will be bad for the baby, so sometimes they often grind their teeth and stick to hard resistance, or because they are worried that taking medicine will affect them, and weaned with tears and cruelty.
Today, Dr. Clove shared with you the theme that mothers do not need hard resistance when they are ill during lactation, and choosing the right drugs has no effect on lactation.
Five Principles of Safe Medication during Lactation
1. Is it necessary to take drugs?
We need to balance the pros and cons of medication during lactation, and only use appropriate drugs when the disease really needs drug treatment. Chinese patent medicines with definite curative effect or lack of safety research during lactation are not recommended during lactation.
2. Choose a single component as far as possible for medication during lactation to avoid compound preparations.
Single ingredients tend to be easier to obtain drug safety assessment, while composite preparations are not recommended for lactation due to the complexity of lactation effects due to the large number of ingredients.
3. Selection of medication mode
On the premise of not affecting the curative effect, try to choose the one that has the least influence on milk. If you can choose external use, you will not choose oral administration, and if you can choose oral administration, you will not choose intravenous administration.
4. Timing of medication
Even if mothers are told that drugs can be used safely during lactation, However, mothers are still worried, so I recommend that if they want to further reduce the possible adverse drug reactions, they can choose to avoid feeding when the blood drug concentration is the highest, and usually recommend taking the medicine after a close feeding or after the baby enters a long sleep at night.
5. Medication safety level
At present, the L grade of clinical pharmacologist and pediatrician Hale is commonly used for rational drug use during lactation in China.
According to the risk level of drug influence on lactation, it is divided into five levels: L1 ~ L5. L1 and L2 drugs are generally considered to have little effect on milk and do not affect the continuation of breast feeding.
The classification of this drug can be found in the [Drug Assistant] of Clove Garden. In fact, we have many drugs to choose from within the range of L1 and L2, which basically includes the drugs for our common diseases.
The following sources can also be used by mothers who have spare capacity to check the safety of drugs during lactation. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) Essential Drug List Recommendations, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and LactMed database query the safety information of drugs during lactation.
Recommendation of safe medication during lactation
Step 1 Fever
Whether it is mastitis or cold common during lactation, or fever caused by other reasons, mothers can choose ibuprofen or acetaminophen (Tylenol), a safe antipyretic drug during lactation.
These two single-component drugs can not only reduce fever, but also be used for various pains during lactation, such as headache, muscle pain, toothache, etc.
One thing to remind everyone is that there is a lag in the domestic instructions. The instructions of ibuprofen say [lactation is forbidden], but in fact they are recommended by WHO and the American Association of Pediatrics to be safe for use and lactation.
Avoiding the use of some cold compound drugs containing pseudoephedrine may have the risk of reducing milk quantity.
Step 2: Cough
Cough caused by various reasons sometimes makes mothers who cannot sleep well at night even more unable to have a good rest.
When dry cough occurs, the mother can use dextromethorphan to relieve it, which is also L1 (safety level) during lactation.
In addition, mothers drinking some honey sweeteners can also help improve cough symptoms.
Step 3: Allergy
Some mothers have allergic constitution and will have various difficult allergic symptoms.
For allergic breast-feeding mothers, the recommended main drug is antihistamine. The safe drugs that can be selected for lactation include loratadine, cetirizine, etc.
It is recommended to avoid the use of chlorphenamine and diphenhydramine, which may affect the taste of milk and cause babies to refuse milk.
4. Diarrhoea
Drugs for diarrhea mainly work in the intestinal tract and seldom enter the blood, thus rarely enter milk, so they can also be used safely.
Montmorillonite can be used for severe diarrhea, but only to improve diarrhea symptoms and not to treat diarrhea diseases themselves.
Step 5: Cold
If viral colds do not require antiviral drugs, they can heal themselves in about a week.
Mothers can take some drugs to improve their symptoms, such as ibuprofen or Tylenol to cool down their fever.
If antibiotics are needed for bacterial colds, penicillin or cephalosporins are preferred without allergy. These are also safe drugs during lactation and do not affect lactation.
5. External use of skin
When the mother’s nipple is damaged, I would recommend mupirocin ointment to prevent infection, or miconazole and clotrimazole for external use during breast eczema during lactation, which are all safe drugs during lactation.
It should be noted that after one close feeding, the external ointment can be used for normal lactation after being scrubbed with clean water before the next feeding.
In a word, nursing mothers do not need to resist when they are ill. They should take good care of their own bodies while taking good care of their babies. Only a healthy and happy mother can take better care of her babies. I hope today’s article can help mothers no longer worry about the impact on their children when taking drugs.