Expert: JM Starkman, MD - 8/11/2010

Question
Dr. Starkman,
My wife will be having gall bladder surgery after she gives birth to our first
child the end of September. Since she will be breastfeeding the child I am
wondering how the anesthesia will affect that? Because of the medicine used
do you have any idea when she would be able to begin breastfeeding with no
side effects to the child?

Answer
Today's anesthetics are so rapidly metabolized that the amounts that make it into mother's milk AND into the baby's circulation after oral consumption are, necessarily, irrelevant. This is especially evident when you consider that if the newborn should REQUIRE a surgery or anesthetic soon after birth (for example, circumcision or minor newborn hernias which are commonplace), all concerned will insist that the newborn have an anesthetic administered to the child certainly exceeding by thousands of times the trace anesthetics incidentally exposed to as a result of mother's surgery and breast feeding!

But academics who write of the 'horrors' of trace anesthetics need to "publish or perish" and pay their mortgages too!  So pardon my real-world answer.--The most unfortunate of newborns who, for serious reasons, must have multiple surgeries and anesthetics have no residual effects from same.  Your wife may breastfeed right after surgery.