A lifeline when no one else gives you an answer

The Drugs in Breastmilk information service was set up more than 20 years ago by the Breastfeeding Network and has been funded by the charity ever since. It was established in response to reports of many breastfeeding women receiving inconsistent or inaccurate advice from some health professionals when they were prescribed a medication or procedure.

Our Drugs in Breastmilk Service (DiBM) is filling a crucial gap by providing breastfeeding families and healthcare professionals with evidence-based information on the relative risks of medication taken by breastfeeding mothers, enabling them to make informed decisions about their own healthcare.

Our team of 25 trained volunteer pharmacists answer enquiries via email and on Facebook every day of the year.

We provide information on compatibility of individual medications, products and procedures with breastfeeding, and help them to explore the situations by asking open questions, listening and sharing current research.

We publish and regularly update 80+ factsheets about commonly queried medications, treatments and procedures, explaining the evidence available on the drug in question, as well as exploring alternatives. In the last year, our factsheets have been accessed by 1.52 million visitors on our website.

In our evaluation, we have found that:

- if mothers had not received the information the DiBM service provides, many would have stopped medication, rather than stopped breastfeeding. Some mothers would have chosen to put their own health at risk, rather than stopping breastfeeding. We are safeguarding mothers' and babies' mental and physical state by providing evidence-based guidance on relative risks of medication.

- healthcare professionals believed that "the service enabled them to provide more accurate, trusted and up to date information to mothers. This was information they often have in training".

Please donate generously to help families at vulnerable time when breastfeeding mums need medication!