Surgery while breastfeeding?

General anesthesia should not affect breastfeeding. You can safely nurse once you are awake and alert enough to hold your baby. By that time, the amount of medication in your bloodstream is low enough that the amounts in your milk would not be significant. The point at which you wake up after general anesthesia is the point where enough of the drug has left your system that it no longer has an effect. In addition, pediatric surgeries require anesthesia - and that is a more serious exposure than through mom's milk. Mom might want to nurse just before the procedure in case she's out for a while or too groggy to function normally for a bit. See the references below for more detailed information

http://www.kellymom.com/health/meds/anesthetics.ht...

http://breastfeeding.hypermart.net/surgery.html

Ideally, you wouldn't introduce bottles that early because you may then have to deal with nipple coonfusion. But, you may or may not have the luxury to chose not to.

I know that most medications are fine for breastfeeding, but not sure about what you will be given. I suggest finding out the names of the medications that you will be given, and then consulting your doctor and also Le Leche League International, LLLI.org

Most docs tell women to stop breastfeeding when the meds are actually safe for breastfeeding. You see, they just don't know, so they think they are going to er on the side of caution. That's why I say to contact both sources so you get a better idea.

Find out first,before messing with pumping. If it ends up being unneccessary to pump and you already did, you could cause oversupply. Oversupply of course is better than too little, but it can cause the baby to be very upset if the baby starts coughing and gagging on too much milk.

A friend of mine was forced to have surgery before her baby was born, and everything was fine.

Make sure well in advance you talk to everyone about your breastfeeding and NEED to get back to it as soon as possible;e after surgery. This will give them a chance to use meds that are safest for both of you and will be removed from your system as fast as possible. You will have to pump and dump some milk. You will need to find out from your doctors how long. With the baby being so young and your milk supply not well established, be prepared to give some formula. This does not make you a bad mother and a couple bottles of formula will not harm your baby or its willingness to nurse! Best of luck!

...how urgent is the surgery? I'm thinking this isn't life-threatening if it can be put off until summer, so why not put it off further? Recovery with a newborn will be difficult, and doing this with a newborn who needs to nurse very frequently will be difficult -- but if you are able to hold off some months you'll have a baby who is much more okay with a few hours without Mum.

"Pumping and dumping" does not generally do anything useful; that doesn't speed elimination of drugs. Most are quite safe, though. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?LACT is a reliable resource. You may also want to call http://motherisk.org/ (note phone numbers); they can give advice based on the age of your baby, quantity of drug, etc -- very useful. They can also offer guidance to any confused physicians, too.

I could wait till the child is older if it isn't an emergency. You best beastfeed for a little bit whilst within the grand scheme of matters, surgical procedure might very negatively have an impact on your deliver. You are her best supply of vitamins, and breast milk supplies SO many advantages (defence towards sickness, and so on). Plus, I would not desire to be within the sanatorium clear of my child. My husband had that surgical procedure a couple of years in the past, and he used to be beautiful out of it for a few days, even after he used to be published. He used to be on meds that I'm certain would not be well for nursing. Just my opinion, of path, however I could wait till after the child has no less than gotten a manage on forged meals (eight-nine months) or ideally after the child is able to be weaned (12+ months).