If your Breast’s on Reglan, is your Baby on Reglan?

February 8th, 2010. By AbiK

There are women who breastfeed, and there are women who don’t. I’m not going into pro’s and con’s here (or a debate on breastfeeding 4 year olds, or public displays of breasts)—but suffice to say, if you’ve been pregnant, you have undoubtedly found yourself signed up for two things associated with the letter “L”: Lamaze and La Leche League training—otherwise known as breastfeeding 101. You may have your own opinions about both practices surrounding the joy of childbirth, but no matter. You will be highly “encouraged” to attend these classes.

Encouragement to be a “good mother” is always good; but unfortunately if you decline attendance—or worse—attend but voice some reservations or lack of desire to follow the script, you feel yourself being labelled…identified…duly noted…as the dissenter in class. Other moms-to-be will cast disparaging glances in your direction like you   JUST.   DON’T.   GET IT. And you begin to internalize the negative vibes and start to question yourself.

God bless Cindy Crawford and her at-home, no meds deliveries. I am not Cindy. And I knew that no amount of huff-huff-puff-puff timed breathing while tightly gripping a pillow was going to delude me into thinking I could breathe through the pain. Nurse!! Where’s that &#@%ing epidural I ordered up!?? 

Breastfeeding was a different story. So many studies done to back up its healthiness. The benefits of bonding. The primal back-to-nature, this-is-what-it’s-all-about thing. Reduced rates of viral infection. Smart babies. On and on. Throw some Baby Einstein in and we’ll be off the WISC IQ scoring charts! Ok, sign me up! Pump for $200? Sure—I’ll take one!

Then…uh-oh…baby’s here and…NA-DA.

All the planning gone to hell. Why? A little thing called “complications”. (Not epidural-related for you Lamaze lovers out there). And so begins the guilt. The what-ifs. The what-now’s? Is my baby already underweight??

La Leche will offer you a figurative shoulder to cry on, along with some resources and guidance. And some well-meaning websites will share with you your “options” to get that milk flowing. One option: Reglan. Reglan’s called a “prescription galactagogue”. Funny thing about Reglan though (and any other prescription claiming to stimulate milk production): it hasn’t been approved by the FDA for such use. Reglan’s side effects have been found to include stimulation of milk production—but the drug can only be offered off-label for that purpose.

Another little thing about Reglan. There aren’t any studies out there to show what the affect of taking Reglan is on your baby. So as you take Reglan to get that milk flowing, and then your baby drinks that milk, is it safe? Who knows?

I don’t want my baby to be an experiment simply because of my over-zealousness in trying to “do the right thing”. Nor do I want to take a drug for its side effects. I’ll leave the “pharma parties” to the teenagers (and that damn well better not be my own, of course).

If you look on youTube, you’ll find a couple of videos where parents have posted a clip of their baby with the question, “does this look like Tardive Dyskinesia?” In one instance, the baby (not in utero, but after birth and with some regurgitation issues) had been taking Reglan. What parent wants to find themselves questioning whether they did the right thing—particularly when it comes to giving your baby a drug?

I never did take any of the suggested drugs or otherwise to re-ignite the milk-producing glands in my breasts. And, thankfully, my ob/gyn is completely non-alarmist—his first words to me were, “Don’t worry, your daughter will be fine.” And he introduced me to formula. By the way, the next time around, I was again offered the option to “artificially” stimulate milk production, but I had twins. You do the math. UPS—where’s my &#@%ing formula delivery?!?

Tags: Breastfeeding, Lactation, Reglan, Tardive Dyskinesia

This was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Drugs/Medical, Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.