5 Situations When You Can’t Breastfeed Your Baby

5 Situations When You Can’t Breastfeed Your Baby

We will not repeat the common truth: breastfeeding is important, necessary, and further in the text. You have probably heard about the fact that mother’s milk is the healthiest food. And maybe even look askance at young mothers who bottle-feed their baby instead of putting it to their breast.

9 2020 June

But, before condemning someone, it is worth remembering the proverb about a person who proposes. Our desires do not always coincide with the possibilities. And situations when a young mother cannot breastfeed are frequent. Moreover, there are cases when she is simply forbidden to do this. All of them are spelled out in the National Program for Optimizing the Feeding of Infants in the First Year of Life. Let’s figure out what this is about.

You can’t – and the point

In fact, there are not so many absolute contraindications, and they are all related to the health of the mother or baby. Only very serious diagnoses can prevent breastfeeding from being established.

HIV infection… If she is diagnosed with a future mother, then the child will not even be attached to the breast. The fact is that, according to statistics, in about 15% of cases, HIV is transmitted to a baby through breast milk. By the way, if a woman does not have negative results of three tests before childbirth, then she will most likely not be allowed to feed either. But here the problem is solved easier: the analysis is done right in the hospital, and if the result is negative, the baby can be applied to the breast.

We add that this is the Russian scenario. In countries that follow WHO guidelines, women with human immunodeficiency virus who are taking special medications can breastfeed their babies.

Open form of tuberculosis… Everything is clear here: with an open form, a person secretes microbacteria that can infect others. Therefore, if Mom still wants to feed herself, first she needs to undergo a course of treatment, wait about two more months and only then start feeding, if it is possible to establish breastfeeding.

Especially dangerous infections: typhoid, cholera, Ebola, and so on. Fortunately, in our country even mentioning them sounds like a terrible fairy tale. But it’s still worth mentioning them.

Carriage of human T-lymphotropic virus types I and II. This virus can be the causative agent of such serious diseases as acute cell leukemia, viral leukemia and other cancers. In this case, a person may not know that he is infected and infect others. From mother to child, such a virus is transmitted through milk.

Diseases of metabolic disorders in a child: galactosemia, alactasia, glucose-galactose malabsorption and others. With these diseases, the baby does not have any enzymes that allow the assimilation of milk. Here there is only one option: to switch to mixtures, and at once medicinal ones.

There are options

Everything listed above are absolute contraindications. Fortunately, they are not so common. Situations are much more common when several conditions must come together in order for the correct decision to be made.

Mom is sick with rubella, chickenpox, measles, mumps, herpes, acute intestinal infection or banal ARVI. By themselves, these diseases, if there is no pronounced intoxication, are not a contraindication. But! First, she needs to take medications that may be incompatible with breastfeeding.

Secondly, if we are talking about herpes infections, we need to monitor where the rashes will be. If the skin of the breast is sprinkled, feeding from it is temporarily stopped. Sprinkled both – temporarily switch to formula or expressed milk. The virus is dangerous for a baby through direct contact with his mouth.

Mom has a cytomegalovirus infection. On the one hand, this virus is actively excreted in breast milk, on the other hand, the baby is sick, as a rule, for a short time and is asymptomatic.

“According to international recommendations, mothers with such a diagnosis can breastfeed full-term babies (the benefit outweighs the risk of negative consequences)” – the official position of Russian medicine.

Mom has hepatitis B or C. In their acute course, breastfeeding is prohibited. Another prohibition if a woman’s nipples are bleeding: infection through the blood is the main possible route.

In other situations, the risk of contracting hepatitis C through milk is minimal.

“With hepatitis B, breastfeeding is possible with vaccination in combination with the introduction of a specific immunoglobulin after the birth of the child,” the experts explain.

Mom has a closed form of tuberculosis. Here the rule is this: if the child is vaccinated, and the woman is taking medications that will not get into the milk or, once they get into it, will not harm the child, then you can feed.

Mom is taking medicine. Now we are talking about drugs that a woman takes all the time. For example, she has some kind of chronic illness that requires regular courses of treatment. In this case, it all depends on whether a particular medicine is allowed for breastfeeding or not.

The most difficult is the ambiguous situation when the instructions say “prescribe with caution” and also about the benefits that outweigh the risks. In this case, the doctor will make the decision, observing the baby’s condition while the mother is drinking the medicine.

Mom smokes. It would seem that there are no ambiguities here: between feeding and smoking, any sane woman will choose the first option. But situations are different, so we talk about them impartially, from the point of view of medicine.

So, it is advisable to give up smoking for the period of lactation. Nicotine reduces milk production, causes anxiety in the child, intestinal cramps, small weight gain. If you can’t quit smoking, then it’s better not to breastfeed.

Mom’s got mastitis. He’s an inflammation of the mammary gland. Many young mothers encounter it during feeding. So, breastfeeding with mastitis is not only possible, but also necessary. Moreover, it is to the sore breast that the baby should be applied as often as possible so that he empties it. There are two contraindications in this situation. The first is antibiotics that are incompatible with breast milk. The second – if the diseased breast began to fester.  

On the part of the child, there are not so many relative contraindications, and they are usually associated with complicated childbirth.

So, premature babies who were born before 32 weeks, crumbs with congenital heart defects, low weight and other conditions when the baby is so weak that he simply does not have the strength to suckle the breast, is not applied to the breast.

In addition, there are some congenital malformations, when the baby has problems with sucking, as well as diseases associated with metabolic disorders of amino acids, such as phenylketonuria or maple syrup disease, in which expressed milk is strictly dosed and combined with special medicinal mixtures.

But in such situations, the baby should not be immediately transferred to the mixture. He should receive expressed breast milk first.

You can also switch to expressed milk if a young mother has to go to work or start school, if she has cracks in her nipples and it is very painful for her to feed herself, and also if she has twins or triplets and is physically unable to feed at the same time their breasts.

By the way

Unbearable pain during feeding, not associated with any interventions, from the point of view of medicine, is also considered an indication for the introduction of a supplement to the baby. However, “intolerance” is a relative concept in itself, so everything is individual here.

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