Would you have the swine flu jab if you were breastfeeding?

[Patchybob]

Apologies if this has already been done to death but I am looking for some advice. I am asthmatic and have the opportunity to have the swine flu jab at the weekend.

I am breastfeeding my 17 week old ds and am concerned that the jab is not a good idea. The nurse at my gp's surgery said she would suggest I didn't have it, but the gp said to have it. What would you do?

Do you think I should have it and express and bin the milk for 24 hours (ds good with a bottle of expressed milk and I have some in the freezer), or should I avoid it? What would you do in my situation. Thanks for the help.

Hi there, are they offering you Celvapan or Pandremix? Pandremix is the controversial one as it contains a chemical called an adjuvant which stimulates your immune system to provide immunity after just one jab (rather than 2 jabs for Celvapan).

If you can get Celvapan I personally would choose to have it.

If the only jab on offer is Pandremix then you are in the same sort of murky situtation as me (4 months pregnant and not sure of what to do for the best!) I think you'd have to find out how long the adjuvant stays in your system for in order to find out whether pumping and dumping would help.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do. On the positive side, if you do have the jab and continue to bf then I suppose there is a chance your baby could get some degree of protection from it?

I'm BF at the mo and I've declined it.

i'm bf and had it last thurs. No probs, no effects. Happy I did it.

i am bf and had mine (celvapan) a couple of weeks ago. no side effects at the time, but hope i have made the right choice, to try and protect my daughter. i asked the question to david salisbury when he was on the webchat here, and he said it was advised. I asked my bfc about expressing and binning and she said there was no nedd. i just fed as normal. my dd was 10 weeks.

HTH

I wouldn't have it BF or not, I am pregnant and have refused but even if I wasn't pg I wouldn't have had it.

The official advice is to have it - and it's always worth remembering that when things are given by injection, it may mean that is the only way they can be effective.

That is, if whatever-it-is is given orally it is destroyed in the gut so becomes 'dead'. So I'm speculating that even if the vaccine did reach the breastmilk in any way (and not everything gets into the milk anyway), the baby's gut would destroy it.

I'm bf and had pandemrix last week. The only problem was a sore arm. The manufacturer's info says it's ok when bf.

Thank you all for your advice...I am not sure which type it is celvapan or pandremix but i will find out.

Thanks again x