How do drugs against depression affect breastfeeding?
You can’t choose when you suffer from depression, especially when it comes to postpartum depression. It’s never a good time to go through something like this, right? But just when your baby has just arrived… Questions race through your head. Can I take antidepressants if I’m breastfeeding? The effects of the medicines may harm the baby and you may have to stop breastfeeding. Or maybe they are compatible. Leave doubts about everything related to breastfeeding and depression.
Depression, motherhood and lactation: a close relationship
- The best food that your newborn baby can receive is, without a doubt, breast milk, but breastfeeding is not possible in all cases. The benefits of breastfeeding, both for the baby and for the mother, are proven and cover both physical and emotional health.
- The arrival of the baby, responsibility, new experiences, doubts, self-demand and, especially, the hormonal revolution that occurs during pregnancy and after childbirth, can make you live very complicated moments. What in principle should be happiness in its purest form, can turn into hell. And you don’t have to feel guilty about it.
- Because depression doesn’t always come at the best time. And of course, the birth of your baby and all the vital changes that this implies is not the best time to suffer from depression, but who chooses it? Postpartum depression is a fact and you better not look the other way and seek treatment as soon as possible. For you and for your baby.
Taking antidepressants and breastfeeding, is it compatible?
- Postpartum depression, like any other type of depression, may require medication. The famous antidepressants and their most famous side effects appear in your whirlwind of emotions as one more problem. Can I take antidepressants if I am breastfeeding my baby? Won’t it be dangerous for him? How can I overcome depression without medication?
- Your doubts will be joined by those of the professionals. Since some doctors will tell you that you can take antidepressants while breastfeeding without affecting the baby at all, others will tell you to be careful and may recommend very low doses of antidepressants and others will recommend that you choose between breastfeeding and medication because they are compatible.
- To do? Consult with more than one professional. Listen to your family doctor, pediatrician, psychologist and psychiatrist and look for those meeting points between them. Because there are many types of antidepressants, some have less effect on breast milk than others. And it may also happen that you can wait a little longer to take medication, it all depends on your degree of depression
- What is clear is that you need to be well to take care of your baby. And if you need drugs for depression, you’ll have to take them. After all, the consequences for the baby are not dangerous beyond the fact that the benefits that breast milk can bring are reduced. But in any case, your baby needs you more than your milk. She needs your love and attention more than your food, so the most important thing is to overcome that depression.
- If you are too worried about taking antidepressants while breastfeeding, you can focus the treatment more on psychotherapy than on drugs, but remember that these are complementary therapies and that you may need both. The psychologist will help you understand your postpartum depression, not blame yourself for feeling bad and move on. But the medication is what gets the neurotransmitters working again.
- In any case, coming out of depression is closer than you imagine and that is when you will begin to enjoy your motherhood.