Breastfeeding and hormones

Many people feel that hormones are kind of creepy substances and many hesitate to use them as medication. Both physicians and mothers look apprehensively at the use of hormonal pharmatherapeutica especially during the breastfeeding period. This hesitation in part is accurate. Hormones and hormone-like medications are powerful substances, especially so for small, still growing and developing children. But in hormonal therapies, like in most medications, medications a child gets through mothers’ milk and the effects it will have on him are much less dramatic than feared for. While during pregnancy the values in the fetuses blood may mimic those in maternal blood, what baby will digest from milk is more or less what his mother carries in her blood. In most cases that will be way too little to be any significant influence. Hormonal contraception may decrease milk production, though, especially those containing estrogens. Hormone replacement therapies, like in hypothyroidism only replaces mom’s own hormones and is therefore harmless to her child.  Corticosteroids can be used in moderation without harm for the child. Short duration an applications with less absorption, like inhalers and topical uses, are preferred. If used on the nipple make sure no cream is on the nipple left when the child latches on.
Hale T: Medications and Mothers’ Milk, Hale Publishing, Amarillo TX, 201014
Breastfeeding website van de afdeling Pediatrie van het Marina Alta Ziekenhuis, Denia, Spanje ‘’e-lactancia.org: http://www.e-lactancia.org/ingles/inicio.asp
Embryotox, Arzneimittelsicherheit in Schwangerschaft und Stillzeit (´´Schaefer online´´), http://www.embryotox.de