NEW mothers are taking an antilactation drug usually prescribed to HIV-positive women to avoid the effects of breastfeeding on their bust.

The drug cabergoline is also being used for “social” reasons by women who find nursing painful or who want to avoid having to express milk from engorged breasts when they return to work.

Health workers say it is part of a backlash against the official advice to new mothers that “breast is best”.

Some doctors fear that in taking cabergoline the women are unnecessarily exposing themselves to potential side effects including heart and lung damage, severe sleepiness and incapacitating headaches.

Others are concerned that suppressing lactation will be detrimental to the health of babies, who are believed to receive protective antibodies and a range of other nutrients from their mother’s milk.

The Department of Health recommends that children are exclusively breastfed for their first six months.

Cabergoline, which is marketed as Dostinex, suppresses production of the hormone prolactin, which stimulates milk production in new mothers.

It is administered in two doses over the course of 12 hours and takes effect fairly quickly. HIV can be passed through breast milk, which is why affected mothers are advised to bottle feed their babies.

The drug’s increasing use is part of a backlash against the huge pressure to breastfeed placed on new mothers in Britain, although many find it excruciatingly painful or do not produce enough milk, according to some doctors.

Kevin Harrington, an obstetrician with a private practice at the Portland hospital in central London, said he offered cabergoline to women who cannot or do not want to breastfeed.

“The breastfeeding police frown on the use of cabergoline, but for some women their breasts are an important part of their sexuality and they don’t want them used to provide milk,” he said.

“There is not enough difference between breast milk and infant formula to make a fuss about it.”

Many doctors will admit to regularly prescribing the drug only on condition of anonymity. “I don’t want to take on the ‘breast is best’ lobby,” said one female doctor who is herself a mother.

“Women are hearing about this drug through word of mouth and asking for it. If someone had offered it to me I would have gladly taken it.”

Pfizer, the manufacturer of Dostinex, said the drug had been licensed since 2002 as a treatment for women who “elect not to breastfeed”, as well as for medical circumstances when breastfeeding was considered inadvisable.

The company said it could not comment on whether “elective” use had increased recently.

Ruth Levy, 28, a paediatric nurse from Elstree, Hertford-shire, who gave birth to Emmanuel, her third child, three weeks ago, had no qualms about using Dostinex.

“Although I am going back to work part-time, that was not the reason,” she said.

“Breastfeeding was agony – far more painful than the scar from my caesarean. Women should have the right to choose not to do it.”

Elsewhere postnatal specialists also report a rising use of cabergoline among highly educated and married women – the group who in the past would have been the most likely to breastfeed.

Geraldine Miskin, a breastfeeding counsellor who charges £150 for a 90-minute session, is seeing increasing numbers of new mothers who want to breastfeed for no more than a fortnight.

“A lot of people are rebelling against the pressure,” she said. “There is something militant about the breastfeeding movement, where women are harshly judged if they don’t do it. Many are simply opting out.”

Others believe women are being influenced by neigh-bours who have moved from France and other parts of continental Europe, where more emphasis is placed on the supposed negative effects of breastfeeding on the bust.

“My breasts are for my husband,” said one 35-year-old French mother of twins who lives in Britain. “He wouldn’t like me feeding the babies and I don’t want to end up with a chest like a cow.”

The question of whether breastfeeding ruins a woman’s figure remains open.

Barry Jones, a London cosmetic surgeon, said genetics had more impact than breastfeeding on the size of mothers’ breasts. “Whether the breasts sag afterwards is pretty much the luck of the draw,” he said. Women are to be given a new right to breastfeed in public under legislation to be published tomorrow.

Mothers will be protected under law from being ejected from parks, shops and restaurants for nursing infants up to the age of six months.

Ministers say mothers who wish to nurse older babies will be covered by existing antisex discrimination legislation.

Harriet Harman, the women’s minister, said: “This is a public health issue. It is time the law swung behind women who want to breastfeed their children in public places. It is still the case that some are turfed out.”

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