01/21/2018
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommendation that mothers with influenza be separated from their babies and not breastfeed makes no sense.
Mothers with influenza should continue to breastfeed. Here is why:
Influenza is infectious, as are most viral infections, BEFORE the person even realizes they are sick. The incubation period of influenza is said to be 1 to 4 days. Therefore, a person can be infectious 1 to 4 days before even realizing they have been infected. Breastfeeding mothers and babies share their environment and thus, wherever the mother picked up the infection, it is also likely the baby did as well.
Furthermore, just because you develop a fever, or cough, does not automatically mean you have influenza since winter is the season of many viral upper respiratory infections which are not always easy to distinguish one from another. Furthermore, not all people will rush down to get tested for influenza with the first time they cough and so the diagnosis will be delayed in most people once they do realize they are sick.
To separate a mother from her baby and ban breastfeeding has serious possible consequences. For babies as well as for toddlers, being refused the breast can be very emotionally traumatic, without necessarily preventing the illness in the baby/toddler, who might already have been infected. Furthermore, the stress of separation may actually increase the risk of illness in the infant/toddler. Not being able to breastfeed is likewise traumatic for the mother and may mean that at the time she is ill, engorgement increases her suffering and the task of having to maintain her supply and diminished milk supply from not breastfeeding.
Has the CDC forgotten the immunological protection that breastfeeding provides for the breastfeeding baby/toddler? Why is influenza different from most other infections? It's not. In fact, it is well known that babies who are breastfed remain healthy even when the mother falls ill with an infectious illness and if they do get sick, breastfeeding helps them get better faster. No other organization, including the WHO, has ever included influenza in the list of illness requiring stopping breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding mothers who have contracted influenza should get appropriate treatment and continue breastfeeding. In case their treatment includes antiviral medications such as oseltamivir (Tamiflu) or others, they are not a contraindication to breastfeeding.
Not only does the recommendation not make sense for protecting the baby from the infection, but as the family is living together, they almost always have been exposed and infected with the influenza virus. So who will be designated to take care of this baby?
Additionally, “interrupting” breastfeeding is term that takes for granted that it is simple to stop breastfeeding and subsequently to resume which is not the case.
Read more about how breastfeeding protects babies when a mother is sick: https://ibconline.ca/maternal-illness1/
