Knee surgery in a week

[Masel]

Next Thursday I'm having knee surgery. My dd is 7 months old and almost exclusively breastfed. (We've recently started letting her play with food and feeding her a bit but not much gets in.) I've been looking through info on Kellymom and at Dr Hale's site but I am not sure what to look for. What is the typical drugs given for light anestesia?

I was pretty confident but today the dr mentioned that I should take a baby asprin to prevent clots. What other drugs should I look for?

There seems to be a lot of mt mama friends who had to have surgery and that was the end of BF.

[pbjmama]

Ask the doctor what you will be given during surgery and after for pain such. Then you can look those up specifically. I would also go ahead and get in contact with someone who has Hales and let them know you may need info next week - sort of put them 'on call' just in case.

[Masel]

The surgeon had told me to talk to the ped and the ped's office told me to talk to the surgeon. Grrrrr

[pbjmama]

It doesn't make sense to talk to the peds office, they don't know what drugs will be administered. The info you need should come from your anesthesiologist and your doctor that is in charge of your case/surgery. Sorry they are giving you the run around.

[Masel]

I figured I would call the surgery center on Monday.

I've been pumping some each day but I don't think I have more than a couple days worth in the freezer.

[boobs4milk]

most times you will be fine. i had a tubal in december and the anesthesiologist (that's who you'll need to talk to) said i could nurse after i felt strong enough to hold her. well, i thought i'd take a day or so to let dh bottle feed her every other feed and i struggled with low supply for over 2 months!

you can check on drugs here: http://neonatal.ttuhsc.edu/cgi-bin/d...s&access=guest

i was also told to just watch her for drowsiness if i took pain meds. i ended up only using ibuprofen but you might need more, but usually those are ok in moderation especially at 7 mos.

hope you have a speedy recovery!

[Heba]

Yes, it is most likely that you will be fine. Remember that mamas are able to breastfeed after a C-section. Once you find out what meds you will be receiving, another website which may help is toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?LACT . Do you know someone with a copy of Hale's? If not, give me a shout (pm) and I can look it up and give you info to discuss with your pediatrician.

[Masel]

I talked to the anesthesiologist this morning. He was great. I have a list of all the med and assured me that they are the same things they would use if they were doing surgery on my 7 month old. I'm going to call the ped's office again.

[AndtheStars]

I had surgery to fix issues from my 3rd degree tear in the beginning of March and was very concerned about breastfeeding. The anesthesiologist was wonderful and was very responsive to my issues. I was only given one medication to put me under (propofol) which cleared my system quickly. I nursed DS three hours after surgery and we were both fine. The key for me was asking the anes. not to give me Versed before the surgery. He said that its routinely given just so people don't remember being in the actual operating room. It's not for pain per se; it's just to give people amnesia about the experience. The downside for me is that it gives me amnesia for the next 12 hours. If you have the chance to decline it, do so. I was awake and ready to leave about 30 minutes after surgery because I declined it. It also meant that I wasn't nauseous or dizzy after surgery. Good luck, Mama! Hope everything goes well!