Can I Get Dermal Fillers While Breastfeeding?

Dermal fillers during breastfeeding — can you use them?
—IV

Dermal fillers are injections of a gel-like substance under the skin to smooth out facial lines. They fill in small wrinkles and generally plump things up. Common usage is in the face or neck. First of all, let me go on the record here as I did in the Botox newsletter and say that you do not need fillers because you are lovely as you are.

But to answer your question… The concern with fillers is that if the gel migrated from the injection site into your bloodstream and then into your breast milk, your infant could ingest it and that could cause a problem. The dual reality here is that this is (on the one hand) fairly implausible and (on the other hand) not something on which we have reliable data.

Similar to Botox, there really isn’t any reason to think that these local injections would migrate at high doses through the bloodstream into milk. But: we do not have reliable data that would show such limited migration, perhaps since this isn’t considered an area crucial to research. (For Botox, there is more evidence because people sometimes get botulism toxin from other sources.) It’s one of those spaces where, probably because it’s “only” cosmetic, it’s not of interest to study. Because it’s not studied, we do not know enough to be confident in what we expect based on first principles.

The ultimate result is that, in the face of no data, caution rules. Even if you and your doctor decided it was fine, you’re unlikely to find a place that would do it.