ABILIFY/LAMICTAL + BF???

[nayma]

hi.  i'm a mama who was lucky to bf (and still does), but a friend recently confided that she may not have a baby bc she cannot bf due to her need to be on lamictal and abilify (for depression).  it sounds like it's not an option for her to go off of them, even briefly, and i'm wondering if anyone here has experience with these meds and bf'ing?  also, she spoke about getting bm from a bank.  is that even worth it?  how much does it cost?  thanks so much for your help!  if this is he wrong place to post, please redirect me...

[Heba]

Both of those medications are classified by Dr Hale (the leading expert on medications and breastfeeding) as L3 - "moderately safe" - which essentially means that they're not necessarily contra-indicated but that the mother and her healthcare team should review the evidence in her particular situation to decide what's best for her and her baby.  Information is available in Medications and Mothers' Milk by Thomas W. Hale, most likely also in the LactMed database http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?LACT and also by calling (if she's in the US) the Infant Risk Center http://www.infantrisk.com/ (other countries have other organisations to call).

It's great that she's also considering donor milk.  She might like to investigate mother-to-mother donations through the Human Milk for Human Babies network on Facebook, for which there should be no charge.

xx

Edited by Heba - 7/25/11 at 11:38pm

[nayma]

thanks so much for your reply!  i will pass some of this along to her.  ironically, she seems relatively okay with the fact that she won't bf, but it's her husband (who's ex-wife -widow was a lactation consultant) who actually feels really pro-bf. 

[Heba]

Ach, please ignore my suggestion about at-breast supplementation.  If baby cannot drink her own milk, then I imagine this would not be an option (sorry, complete brain-freeze there).  I'll delete that from my post for anyone who reads later.

"Bottle nursing" would be more appropriate: http://www.attachmentparenting.org/principles/feed.php .