If I'm taking paracetamol can I also give breastfed baby Calpol?

[SylvesterTheCat]

I'm just wondering if my paracetamol will get into breast milk and maybe if giving Calpol to baby will be too much for her.

From the British National Formulary:

Pregnancy - Not known to be harmful.

Breast feeding - Amount too small to be harmful.

Assuming you are sticking to recommended doses of Calpol it should be okay. You might want to try to time your paracetamol doses to be immediately after feeds if you can manage this, but it's not likely to be so easy.

Thank you @HarryTheSteppenwolf
So would paracetamol be in my milk almost immediately after taking it and then gradually wear off from then? Or does it take a couple of hours to get into my milk?

The concentration of paracetamol in your blood reaches its peak between 30 min and 4 h after taking it. For normal therapeutic doses taken without food it's probably within an hour. Paracetamol has quite a short half-life, so once it's absorbed into the blood it gets removed quite quickly: half of it will be gone within 2-3 h. I don't know about time to peak concentration in milk but it won't be much longer than the time to peak concentration in blood.

Ring the number on

www.nationalbreastfeedinghelpline.org.uk

Or live chat them.

They are fab

Thank you so much both. Really helpful.

I do know that if baby were admitted to hospital they'd likely be given a higher paracetamol dose than we give via calpol so I'm sure it's fine. But ring to check.

Iirc there's a fb page called breastfeeding and medication and you can pm them - they've access to all the info too.

Wow @Cointreaugin that's really useful to know! Thank you.