I have some questions about what you said about chicken pox and breastfeeding. My understanding of shingles is that it is almost always unilateral, so even if a mom had shingles on one breast why couldn't she breastfeed from the non-shingled breast and just cover the shingles with gauze and tape? Also, she could pump the affected breast until the shingles resolve and just discard that milk. The baby should have varicella antibody from being in utero and should be protected. My other question has to do with the mother who has chicken pox. Ruth Lawrence says that if a baby is born with lesions he should be isolated with the mom and be allowed to breastfeed. If the mom gets lesionswithin 6 days of delivery and no lesions are present on the baby, they should be isolated separately. She also says that antibody appears in 48 hours in the milk so the baby can be breastfed as soon as the mother and infant can be together. Babies can also receive VZIG which can reduce severity of the disease. This is from the fourth edition and is on page 487. She doesn't have anything in her index about shingles. I was surprised to see that the recommendation was "not to breastfeed" when I thought that our goals were to help women breastfeed if they want to, and to try our best to get around any obstacles, rather than just say "you can't breastfeed." Anyway, now that we'll have the vaccine by mid June, maybe it will become similar to Hepatitis B, which used to be a contraindication to nursing, until we got the vaccine. Terry Lynn Dise, MD [log in to unmask]