>  Can anyone tell me about the use of inhalers Tylade and Rhinocort (both
>used daily) and Maxaire (an emergency inhaler) by a bf mom with a 15 mo?

Sara, hopefully someone here will give you a definitive answer on these
medications, but I would advise the mother to ask her physician to recommend
an asthma medication that is compatible with breastfeeding.  There are many,
and I believe that it is, at best, laziness that is behind a Health Care
Provider's throwing out the latest drug and telling a mom to wean instead of
doing the research to see which meds have a longer history of use and which
are compatible with breastfeeding.

The HCP could, of course, make herself knowledgeable about the factors
determining the amount of drug excreted into milk and use these guidelines
in prescribing. Instead most of them act as promoters for the pharmaceutical
companies using the advertising publication, the PDR, as their "professional
resource" and putting the responsibility onto the mother to see to the
health of her child. Then she gives the LLLL or LC the responsibility and
they come to Lactnet where Dr. Hale or our physicians are left to fulfill
the responsibility that was the HCPs from the start.

Sorry, I got a bit carried away.  What I want to say is that we need to
encourage mothers to speak up when a HCP says to stop breastfeeding for
*any* reason.  They need to say *at that time*, "I don't choose to stop
breastfeeding my baby.  What treatment can you recommend that is compatible
with my choice?" Perhaps we need to include practice saying that in our
breastfeeding classes.

Mothers aren't really helpless before these HCPs, they have merely given
over their adult freedom of choice to a person who is rarely challenged to
do her job fully. We can help the mothers whom we work with to reclaim their
position as "partners" in the health care of their families.


Patricia Gima, IBLC
Milwaukee
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