>It is my understanding (from literature and observation and assistance with
>two different cases) that mothers with shingles/chicken pox that did not
>occur within 2-7 days of delivery can breastfeed as long as the open
>lesions are not on the breast.  In one case I worked with, the mother (an
>OB) tested her milk and it was clean. She had lesions on other places on
>her body but not the breast; her baby was kept at breast and she did not
>get chicken pox, nor did she appear to suffer any other
>consequences--except that she stayed healthy throughout (this baby could
>NOT tolerate any of the commercial formulas on the market, a finding
>identified 6 weeks earlier when the mother went back to work.) As a result,
>she pumped more often and kept the baby on exclusive human milk feedings
>until she showed an interested in solids, at around 11 months of age. This
>child got a rash whenever exposed to cow milk until she was 2 years 9
>months of age.
>
>In another case, a mother I was asked to pump while she was in ICU (she had
>pox in her lungs and was on a respirator) was separated from her baby; her
>entire body, including breasts was covered with pox and she began breaking
>out 3 days before birth. However, her milk was tested and it was clean, so
>we pumped her and later, she pumped herself, and the baby stayed in the
>nursery, getting her mother's milk until the mother's lesions had healed
>and she was no longer in ICU.
>
>Re: goat's milk, when I was in Nebraska and working at a WIC office, we had
>a number of women who preferred to give goat's milk to the cow-made variety
>when they were not breastfeeding or were doing so ineffectively. The
>dietitians went nuts with this because information from the American Dairy
>Goat Association (at that time) implied that straight goat's milk (in cans,
>not raw fresh) was completely safe for human infants.  However, the
>dietitians insisted that the solute load of goat's milk was completely
>inappropriate for infants under 6 months and INSISTED that these mothers
>dilute the canned goat's milk by an equal amount of water to reduce that
>load.  When the mothers did this, the baby's lived, but we also made a
>strenuous effort to get them back to breast or at least mostly
>breastfeeding.
>
>         %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>         %%  Kathleen G. Auerbach, PhD, IBCLC    %%
>         %%        Lactation Services            %%
>         %%        Homewood, Illinois            %%
>         %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

         %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
         %%  Kathleen G. Auerbach, PhD, IBCLC    %%
         %%        Lactation Services            %%
         %%        Homewood, Illinois            %%
         %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%