Breastfeeding after general anaesthesia

[jasper]

Anyone know how soon you can breastfeed after having a general anaesthetic?
I will need an operation under GA when my baby is about 5 months old and would like minimum disruption to feeding him.
I will also be having some fairly hefty painkillers and would like to know how this will affect brestfeeding. I know practically everything is officially contraindicated if you are breastfeeding but most of that advice can be safely ignored!
Thanking all you experts in advance.

Jasper, can you express a supply of milk in advance and freeze it for the time? Also, I don't think the time period that the drugs stay in your blood is very long (maybe less than a day). I put my back out, lifting my fatso baby, when he was few months old and had to take a serious painkiller. I did some research on line and found quite a bit of info that indicated that very little of what you consume actually crosses into the breastmilk. I think you may find that the real problem is that you will be too exhausted to breastfeed for a day or two.

I was advised not to feed ds for 24 hours after having an impacted wisdom tooth out using a local anaesetic under sedation (valium). Ds had happily started solids by this stage, could sip but had never taken to the bottle.

I stayed with my mother and dh went home with ds (aged 5-6 months), they survived and I was too out of it to care. The op was in the afternoon which worked quite well as ds could be fed before and sent home. Not seeing me helped with trying to settle him for the night etc as I didn't have to fight him away. Milk seemed fine afterwards, no interuption to supply.

Message withdrawn

After a drug free labour I had to have retained placenta removed in theatre under GA of say 40 mins. No one told me not to breastfeed and he was exclusively breastfed. I am sure that a 5 mth old wld be able to cope with a bit of drugs in the breastmilk too, but if your op is really long, then there may be more drugs in the milk.

Bf after a GA is fine....totally daft advice not to bf after a local anaesthetic for denatl treatment, Malmomum!!! Women bf after sections with GA, and no one bats an eyelid about the effect of the GA on the baby - and that's a new baby, not a hefty 5 moth old!!

If the baby had to have pain killers direct, or an anaesthetic, no one would worry. The amount of pain killer or GA that gets into the milk is tiny compared to that.

Hope everything goes well, jasper.

Toktok thanks for the advice but it was the valium not the local that knocked me sideways or are bf'ers allowed valium generally?

I think it's like Sofia said, it was nice not to have to be available for a little bit of time. My tooth thing was not as pleasant an experience as giving birth to put in the scale of things

Valium is prob not that great to use all the time with bf, but shd be ok for acute use. Basing this on Hale (Medications and Mothers Milk) who makes the distinction clear. The chronic use leads to a build-up, which is problematic, but acute use doesn't....so a one-off to sedate you would seem fine. Hale suggests other benzos (like lorezepam) are preferable if a mother needs something long term.

thank you all for your advice.
Sofia Ames I was hoping not to express ( I am not too good at it!)but as malmomum said, it might be quite nice not to be so available for a wee while!