Breast Feeding

Acceptability at Recruitment

ACCEPTABLE

Acceptability at CT / Work-Up

QUALIFIED if the donor is sufficiently informed about and accepts the fact that there are limited data on safety or is willing to interrupt breastfeeding (and throw away any expressed milk, “pump and dump”) during mobilization and for three days after PBSC and for at least 24 hours after Bone Marrow Collection (discuss case per case with the attending anesthesiologist).

Individual at Risk

Donor

Guidance

We generally recommend that breast-feeding mothers do not donate and, regardless of breast-feeding, donation is not permitted within six months of a term pregnancy.

However, many breast-feeding donors who are more than six months following delivery feel very strongly that they would like to donate, and would be prepared to stop or suspend breast-feeding at the time of donation.

PBSC harvest

G-CSF is known to be secreted in breast milk (Kaida et al, Act Haematol 2007): it is unknown whether oral G-CSF would have any clinical effect on the infant.

Breast-feeding donors may donate by PBSC if they are prepared to stop breast-feeding on commencing G-CSF injections and to abstain for one week following the last dose of G-CSF. It is safe for the mother to express before this one-week period has expired, but the expressed milk should be discarded.

Bone marrow harvest

Anaesthetic drugs are generally very short-lived in the maternal blood stream. Breast-feeding may continue up until anaesthetic induction prior to the bone marrow harvest, and mothers may recommence feeding 24 hours following recovery from anaesthetic, i.e after 'waking up'. If any other medications are given around the time of the procedure, such as sedating benzodiazepines (e.g. midazolam/diazepam), or opiates (e.g. morphine/codeine) then advice should be sought from the attending anaesthetist.

See also

Pregnancy

Version

Version 1, Edition 1

Date of Last Update

24th October 2012