I have been reading Lactnet for a while now but have only posted twice so I will reintroduce myself briefly. I am a registered nurse and midwife and am qualified in neonatal nursing. I have this year qualified as an IBCLC and I work in a hospital maternity unit part as midwife and part as breastfeeding adviser on the postnatal ward and neonatal unit. I am looking after a mother who is breastfeeding her second baby. She has fairly recently started to suffer from severe allergic reactions to certain unknown substances in the environment but no food or drink. She takes piriton (chlorphenamine/chlorpheniramine) occasionally. She is worried about the histamine levels in her milk when she has an allergy attack and isn't sure whether it is OK to breastfeed after such an episode. It seems to me that as she takes antihistamines on these occasions any rise in histamines in breastmilk (if they actually get into the milk) should be countered by the antihistamines but I don't know. The mum has given permission to ask you all the question. Her second question is how long adrenaline (EpiPen) which she has had to take rarely will stay in the milk. I have been unable to find anything on this and have no access to Hale at the moment. She is aware that breastfeeding is her only option to reduce allergies in her children and is happy to do it. I would be grateful if anybody can enlighten me on this subject. Thanks in advance. Lucy Simnett RGN, RM, IBCLC Bracknell, UK _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html