vindicated.

When Wesley was 5 days old he gave me a HUGE scare. He had been sleeping for about an hour or more when Ammon and I decided we wanted to bathe him and get him ready for bed. Usually upset by his bath, Ammon and I prepared for a screaming newborn, but what we got was a listless baby that we could not wake. I was worried that his bilirubin levels had spiked so I immediately called the Pediatrician. She urged us to try waking him by pinching the heels of his feet and his cheeks... nothing (and I was pinching hard). By this time, I was frantic. My newborn baby that just hours ago was full of life and vigor was suddenly limp and unresponsive. We instantly rushed Wesley to the Emergency Room where we met my parents. Then, my mom asked me the key question, "Lynette, did you take anything today?"
Suddenly, I realized that I had taken my prescribed pain killer a few hours before. Once I got back to see a doctor I was treated like a moron! The doctors and nurses were completely patronizing and rude. "You do understand that newborns sleep a lot, don't you?" they'd comment. Since my milk had just barely come in Wesley was finally getting traces of my medication and it knocked him out. Visibly shaken by this event, I asked the doctor why I would have been prescribed this medication if I was going to be nursing.
She laughingly replied, "Well, you need to get your sleep too!" Then, she tried convincing me to continue taking the pain killers.
I was flabbergasted! There was no way that I was going to continue to take a medication that had such an adverse effect on my newborn, no matter how much pain I was in.
I flushed my medicine and Wesley returned to normal, but my visit to the ER left me with a horrible feeling. How could they have treated me so poorly and laughed off my mother's intuition?
Here comes my vindication. Today in the Houston Chronicle was the following article...

Breastfeeding mothers alerted
about drugs with codeine

WASHINGTON — Breast-feeding mothers who take medications that contain codeine should watch their infants for possible signs of morphine overdose, such as becoming overly sleepy, Food and Drug Administration officials warned Friday.

A new agency advisory said a small percentage of mothers could have the ability to metabolize codeine at rapid rates, turning it into morphine and putting their babies at risk for overdose. The agency became aware of the issue after the death of a 13-day-old Toronto infant last year was attributed to his mother being an "ultra-rapid metabolizer."

"When codeine enters the body and metabolizes, it changes to morphine," said Dr. Sandra Kweder, the FDA's deputy director of the Office of New Drugs. "That can be transported in the blood and through breast milk."

Kweder said some people have a biological variation in a liver enzyme that makes them capable of changing codeine to morphine more quickly and completely than others.

Although the hereditary rapid-metabolizer gene seems to be rare, the use of codeine is common among postpartum women. It often is prescribed after Cesarean section deliveries, episiotomies and other procedures. Codeine is common in low-grade painkillers such as some forms of Tylenol, and even in some nonprescription cough syrups.

The FDA has asked makers of prescription and other codeine-containing drugs to include a specific warning on labels to address the possible danger of passing morphine on through breast milk.

Finally, I feel like I was right after all! That medication wasn't safe for me to take while nursing. I'm not sure if my body metabolizes codeine like in this article, but I'm glad that I didn't find out the hard way that it does.

Moral: Always listen to your mother's intuition!

"Most of us recognize the closeness of the bond that can form between a mother and her child, but we may not realize the extent to which the power of intuition makes this bond possible. The accuracy and the scope of a mother's intuition are something we're just beginning to understand." ~ Dr. Shamas, USA Today, 1998.