Medications and breastfeeding

I am still nursing my fifteen month old son, and plan to continue doing so for the time being. This then poses a bit of a problem because I'm going to be in the hospital for at least a day after the surgery is complete. After that, I have to consider how any medications I take my impact him.

I don't plan to have my son brought to the hospital post-surgery, so it doesn't really matter what anesthesia is used--it will be out of my system by the time I feel well enough to pump. But after that point, I'd like to pump and save the milk rather than dumping it (breast milk has been called liquid gold), and resume nursing my son without any problems.

Here is a link that summarizes the different pain medications and their safety levels for breastfeeding (and pregnancy): http://kellymom.com/health/meds/pain-meds.html

I'm bringing a print-out of this to my surgery consult on the 15th. Though I'm hopeful that stronger pain medications may not be necessary since a number of blogs I've read have only used Tylenol or ibuprofen.

In the meantime I've started pumping so that my son will have milk while I'm in the hospital. I really don't like pumping--I feel like such a cow! But I'm making measurable progress, so that eases the sting a little bit. Every day and a half or so I put away another 4 oz bag of milk into the freezer. However, I don't know how much he's going to drink, since I can't measure how much he consumes when he's nursing. I'm going to just keep going and probably have too much.