Is Nitrous Oxide Safe in Breastfeeding
Question
I am a breastfeeding mother and i want to know if it is safe to use Nitrous Oxide? Is Nitrous Oxide safe for nursing mother and child? Does Nitrous Oxide extracts into breast milk? Does Nitrous Oxide has any long term or short term side effects on infants? Can Nitrous Oxide influence milk supply or can Nitrous Oxide decrease milk supply in lactating mothers?
Nitrous Oxide lactation summary
- DrLact safety Score for Nitrous Oxide is 3 out of 8 which is considered Low Risk as per our analyses.
- A safety Score of 3 indicates that usage of Nitrous Oxide may cause some minor side effects in breastfed baby.
- Our study of different scientific research indicates that Nitrous Oxide may cause moderate to no side effects in lactating mother.
- Most of scientific studies and research papers declaring usage of Nitrous Oxide low risk in breastfeeding are based on normal dosage and may not hold true for higher dosage.
- While using Nitrous Oxide We suggest monitoring child for possible reactions. It is also important to understand that side effects vary largely based on age of breastfed child and time of medication in addition to dosage.
- Score calculated using the DrLact safety Version 1.2 model, this score ranges from 0 to 8 and measures overall safety of drug in lactation. Scores are primarily calculated using publicly available case studies, research papers, other scientific journals and publically available data.
Answer by Dr. Ru: About Nitrous Oxide usage in lactation
We are working on a comment for this product.
Answer by DrLact: About Nitrous Oxide usage in lactation
Because the serum half-life of nitrous oxide in the mother is short and the drug is not expected to be absorbed by the infant, no waiting period or discarding of milk is required.[1][2] Some evidence indicates that primiparous mothers who use inhaled nitrous oxide during labor for analgesia have better breastfeeding success than mothers who do not. If used as part of general anesthesia, breastfeeding can be resumed as soon as the mother has recovered sufficiently from anesthesia to nurse. When a combination of anesthetic agents is used for a procedure, follow the recommendations for the most problematic medication used during the procedure.
Nitrous Oxide Possible Effects in Breastfeeding
A randomized, but nonblinded, study in women undergoing cesarean section compared epidural anesthesia with bupivacaine to general anesthesia with intravenous thiopental 4 mg/kg and succinylcholine 1.5 mg/kg for induction followed by nitrous oxide and isoflurane. The time to the first breastfeed was significantly shorter (107 vs 228 minutes) with the epidural anesthesia than with general anesthesia. This difference was probably caused by the anesthesia's effects on the infant, because the Apgar and neurologic and adaptive scores were significantly lower in the general anesthesia group of infants. It is not known what part nitrous oxide played in this difference in outcome.[3] A retrospective database study found that primiparous women who receive a nitrous oxide-oxygen mixture for pain during delivery in addition to routine analgesia were more likely to be breastfeeding their infants at 48 hours postpartum than women who did not receive nitrous oxide. This correlation was not found when all women were included in the analysis.[4] In a nonrandomized, nonblinded retrospective study, 62 women who chose labor with gas analgesia with 50% nitrous oxide and oxygen were compared to a control group of 124 women who did not receive gas analgesia during labor. Most of the women in the study were primiparous. Use of other labor medications was not reported. Women who received nitrous oxide had higher rates of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding than those who did not at 7 days after discharge, at 1 month postpartum, and at 3 months postpartum.[5]