How to Use Albuterol While Breastfeeding

If you're struggling with troubling allergy or asthma symptoms while breastfeeding, Albuterol may be the safest solution. Other similar medications contain theophylline, which may cause irritability in infants under six months of age; however the inhaler form of Albuterol has no reported side effects for the infant. Understanding when and how to take Albuterol can help guarantee your infant's safety.

Instructions

Albuterol and Breastfeeding

1

Continue breastfeeding. According to the website AskDrSears.com, allergies generally run in the family, so breastfeeding your baby now can help reduce his chance for allergies later. In addition, the longer you breastfeed, the more likely it is that your child won't suffer from plaguing allergy symptoms. Breastfeeding could also inhibit your own allergy symptoms, because breastfeeding stimulates your natural tranquilizing hormones. This could help reduce your symptoms and even the severity of your allergies.

2

Choose the inhaler form of Albuterol, not the oral medication. According to Thomas W. Hale, author of "Medications and Mothers' Milk," the oral dose of Albuterol stays in your blood plasma, which makes it more likely that it will transfer to your milk. Hale says that using the inhaler results in less than a 10% transfer to maternal blood plasma. It is possible that a small amount will pass to the breast milk, but currently, no incidences have been reported. In addition, Albuterol is classified as an L1 drug, which means that it is the safest drug for a breastfeeding mother. Hale claims that through controlled studies, L1 drugs pose the least amount of risk to infants.

3

Take Albuterol immediately after feeding your baby. Though Albuterol is a level L1 drug and poses very little threat to your baby when you take it in the inhaler form, to minimize its effects, try to feed your baby before taking the drug. Albuterol's half-life (the amount of time it stays present in your body) is only three and a half hours. Feeding your baby first allows the drug to circulate through your system before baby's next feeding.