Lorazepam and Breastfeeding

QUESTION: I am still breastfeeding my daughter (4-5x a day) sometimes more sometimes less. I was given a prescription for Lorazepam (.5 mg) for anxiety. The Dr. told me that very little will get into my milk but I wanted to ask an "expert" and see if you think I should continue to take it? I really need it right now, I'm having a lot of personal problems and can't deal with anything and was snapping at my daughter a lot before I started using the drug, but I don't want to use it if it will hurt her.

Short-term, low doses of this medication should not cause major problems. With this class of medications we can have problems in babies whose mothers take long term and high doses. This does not appear to be your situation.

Anne Norton-Krawciw, RPh, IBCLC

Follow-up to above:

Does this mean that there could be some problems (like what?) just not major ones? I'm taking .5 mg 2x a day.





At the dosage level that you are taking this medication there have not been adverse reactions reported in healthy babies.

However with this group of drugs as a class -- long term use at high doses is not advised -- mainly due to drowsiness -- leading to slow wt gain in the infant -- and possible other, what seem to short term developmental problems -- because the baby is too sleepy to learn new stuff.

In your case you don't seem to be taking large doses over a long period of time, you have an older baby who is not nursing like a newborn 10-12 times per day so less exposure to the drug through the milk -- if you take only what you need in the short term and monitor your baby for proper wt gain and development (which most mom's do anyway) the likelihood of problems seems very small -- one can never say zero percent -- all drugs have the possibility of passing in small amounts into moms milk. And whether you take the medication or not is your choice.

good luck
Anne Norton-Krawciw, RPh, IBCLC

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