Is this medication safe?

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with shingles (apparently not only for old people...who knew?) and put on a cornucopia of medications, including Acyclovir, Prednisone, Valium, and Tylenol with codeine. At the time, we were still breastfeeding, but prescribing doctor told me to to breastfeed until I was done with all of the medications. So we began the routine of pumping and dumping while giving Little Bear breastmilk from my freezer stash. When that ran out, we transitioned her to whole milk, which we were planning to do anyway because she just turned 1 year old. However, even after the cow's milk transition, I still wanted to be able to nurse her when we were together. I wasn't finished with a few of the medications, but I was worried that any longer gap in breastfeeding would be an obstacle to my "nurse morning and night" plan. Cue the Infant Risk Center. I'd seen a friend of mine recommend them repeatedly in our online breastfeeding support group, but had never really thought about taking advantage of their services myself. When I called, they asked what medications I was taking and gave me detailed information about how much of each medication was transferred into my breastmilk. They also gave a safety ranking (from 1-4, with 1 being completely safe and 4 not recommended). Lastly, they gave a general assessment of safety based on the age of my child and the frequency of breastfeeding. With that information, I was able to time my meidcation doses to limit Little Bear's exposure and we were able to resume breastfeeding within a few days rather than weeks. I would definitely recommend this website (and their associated phone service) to any breastfeeding mother who wants information about a medication that she has been prescribed. Primary care physicians aren't always up to date on the newest breastfeeding safety research because nursing mothers are only one small subset of the population of patients that they see. The Infant Risk Center is a great resource for evidence-based information about medication transfer to breastmilk.