Can I breastfeed if I have a cold during lactation?

During the lactation period, women's body resistance will easily decline, making them more susceptible to external viral and bacterial infections, which can easily lead to colds. When a cold occurs during lactation, you can still breastfeed normally, but taking medication may easily affect breast milk, and you need to use correct medication for treatment.

1. Can I breastfeed if I have a cold during breastfeeding?

Breastfeeding mothers can still breastfeed if they have a cold. If it is just a mild cold, then after taking the correct medicine, the body will produce antibodies, so the baby will be immune when drinking breast milk and will not be affected. If it is a severe flu, mothers should try to express breast milk for their babies while breastfeeding and need to be isolated from their babies in time.

2. Precautions for colds during breastfeeding

1. Pay attention to medication

If a breastfeeding woman catches a cold, she needs to pay attention to how to use the medicine correctly. Breastfeeding is a special stage because the nutrition needed by the child at this stage needs to be provided by the mother. Therefore, incorrect use of medicine will also affect the child's development. Women who are breastfeeding can choose to take ibuprofen, penicillin, and cephalosporin, but are prohibited from taking Gankang, Baijiahei, and compound cold medicines.

2. Choose the appropriate time to take medication

When a breastfeeding mother takes medicine after catching a cold, she should try to choose the most correct and appropriate time. Generally, it is best for the mother to take the medicine immediately after breastfeeding, and the interval between taking the medicine again should be longer. This way, the impact of the medicine on the child will be very small.

3. Timely isolation

If the mother's cold has not improved after taking medication, then at this time, try not to have long-term contact with the child to prevent infection of the child, causing the child to also catch a cold. Wait until the mother's health gets better before contacting the child.

Whether taking medicine during breastfeeding will affect the baby depends on the nature of the medicine and its concentration in breast milk.

After a breastfeeding mother takes the medicine, it is absorbed into the blood circulation through the gastrointestinal tract, and 1% to 2% of the drug can be transferred into breast milk. This dose generally does not have adverse effects on the baby. Although many studies have been done on the secretion of drugs into breast milk in animals, and the ratio of drug concentrations in human breast milk to plasma have also been studied, the amount of drug actually absorbed by the newborn from breast milk has not been measured, so the effects on the newborn, if any, are unclear. Nevertheless, breastfeeding mothers should use isoniazid, metronidazole (Flagyl), gentamicin, kanamycin, streptomycin, erythromycin, sulfonamides, chloramphenicol, codeine, morphine and other drugs with caution to prevent toxic reactions in the newborn. Treatment with radioisotopes or anti-tumor drugs is a contraindication to breastfeeding. If treatment is necessary, breastfeeding should be stopped.

Can you breastfeed if you have a cold while breastfeeding? Breastfeeding mothers should decide according to different situations.