Your arguments are right, of course, but it is so difficult when
someone does not want to hear.  The inserts *always* say a drug is
contraindicated during breastfeeding.  This is for the protection of
the company not the mother or baby.  So if it only says it should be
used with caution during lactation, it must be super safe.
Phenylephrine is used in many children's cough medications.
Proparacaine is probably a local anaesthetic, and as such, is unlikely
to be absorbed from the gut.  The other, I have no information on.

Go to another optometrist, I would say, and let this one know why.
Such blind stubbornness should not go unchallenged.

Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC