by Anne Eglash MD, IBCLC, FABM
Does administration of oxytocin (Pitocin) effect breastfeeding? Oxytocin plays a central role in the management of labor and delivery in the USA and in many other countries. It is used to induce labor, augment a slow or stalled labor, and given after birth to prevent or control postpartum bleeding.
Oxytocin is a crucial hormone secreted from a breastfeeding mother’s pituitary gland, responsible for milk ejection. All sorts of stimuli initiate an oxytocin surge in breastfeeding women, such as hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, or thinking about the baby. The question is whether the oxytocin given during labor and delivery messes with the mother’s ability to create her own oxytocin surges in the first few days postpartum, and whether this in turn has an overall effect on the success of lactation.
The authors of a 2017 study compiled the evidence to date on the effect of administrating oxytocin during labor and after delivery on breastfeeding.
What do you think they found? Choose 1 or more:
- Some studies have found that oxytocin during labor and delivery benefits the breastfeeding outcome.
- Studies consistently show that administrating oxytocin is associated with a delay in lactation (taking longer for the milk to ‘come in’).
- Administrating oxytocin intrapartum is strongly associated with a shorter duration of breastfeeding.
- Giving oxytocin during labor causes infants to not nurse as well during the first week postpartum.
- All of the above are true.
- None of the above are true
Veronica Annan
All of the above are true
Helen Madukwe
I know that it has an effects on the milk production & I picked B but I did not consider the effect on baby, consistency & delay. This is good to know. Thanks Doc.
Ann Calandro
I was given oxytocin with my first and third baby. None with my second and fourth babies. I experienced significant engorgement with baby 1 and baby 3, but no engorgement with the others. Of course this is an N of one but this was my experience.
annyce
So, I was not expecting this as I chose D. Thinking that an interventionist birth probably had an impact on infant behaviour in the first week. I guess it depends on the variables associated with the administration of oxytocin.
Nora Klein, MD FAAP
One would like to endorse a course that least manipulates Mother Nature. One would hope that oxytocin administration would be considered an option only when and if there is a problem.
Verity Livingstone MD, FABM
There might be a correlation between the maternal exposure to oxytocin in labour and subsequent breastfeeding challenges. The problems lie mainly with the definition of breastfeeding versus lactation. Oxytocin may have a direct positive or negative effect on maternal lactogenesis. It may have an indirect positive or negative effect on the infants ability to breastfeed. Oxytocin augmentation is often used when the baby is stuck and failing to progress. This may prevent an emergency c section or it may contribute to facial moulding and subsequent physical challenges to the infant suckling efficiently. Hence possible breastfeeding challenges. In other words, it is almost impossible to tease correlation versus cause and effect. Never the less, any delivery that involved the use of oxytocin should be considered high risk and the mother and baby need extra close follow up.