Hi
I’m having a discussion with some friends. While none of us are able to provide cites, one group is certain than drinking alcohol while breast feeding is definately not harming the child while the other group is certain that drinking is harmful.
When the fetus is in the uterus, we have no doubt that nutrition and chemicals(in general?) are transferred, but how about breast milk?
What’s the straight dope?
A simple Google search may be best summarized as follows:
http://www.betterhealthcentre.com/breastfeeding/breastfeeding_alcohol.htm
FWIW, if you were a breast feeding mother ask yourself a simple [loaded] question, “Is my personal self-indulgence more important than the potential lifetime threat to the baby I now have?”
There are steps a breastfeeding woman can take to minimise the child’s exposure to alcohol if she does choose to drink.
For example- expressing enough milk prior to drinking alcohol so that the baby doesn’t breastfeed while she has alcohol in her bood stream.
Drinking immediately after a feed to ensure that the maximum amount of time will elapse between consuming alcohol and breastfeeding.
Alcohol is only in the breast milk while it is in the bloodstream, and allowing 1 hour per unit of alcohol consumed you can work out when it will be safe to feed again.
irishgirl- who feeds her baby 7pm, and who will then have the occasional glass of wine with dinner, knowing that it will be well out of her system by the next feed at 6am.
Do you have a citation for this? Are you certain alcohol has to be in the bloodstream at the time of feeding for the milk to be affected by the alcohol?
I do not understand the human lactation process. But if milk production is continuous and not triggered at feeding time, you may very well be wrong.
I’m not wrong.
Cites:
http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/features/family/alcohol-and-breastfeeding
http://www.breast-feeding-information.com/breastfeeding-and-alcohol.php
From the second cite:
“Alcohol is not locked into breast milk”.
It takes 30 minutes after ingestion of alcohol for it to reach the breastmilk, and 2% of the alcohol ingested will make it into the milk. The advice to allow 2-3 hours for each unit of alcohol is based on caution rather than physiology, and the fact that the livers of babies under 3 months take approximately twice as long to process alcohol as an adult would (the average adult will process alcohol at a rate of 1 unit/hour).
I’m not a lush trying to justify my bad personal choices!
Is there any particular risk of slightly alcoholic milk to a baby? If only 2% of the alcohol makes it into the milk, it doesn’t seem very likely that the quantities would be enough to do anything harmful. While the baby is in the womb, developing, I can see how an alcoholic environment could harm the formation of the fetus, but our digestive system is fairly well built to handle the intake of mild toxins. Heck, babies will swallow crayons and glue and other assorted chemicals.
It’s really not that simple. There are thousands of things that could have potential harm to the baby, but it really isn’t the best strategy to live a life of complete denial for 12-24 months (including the pregnancy) on the off chance that something could be harmful. Reasoned, rational caution (which, I would argue, involves not breastfeeding within several hours of breastfeeding, but not totally abstaining) is really better than a knee-jerk paranoia about everything. Knee jerk paranoia about everything leads to women feeling guilty about eating a Hershey’s kiss (there’s caffeine! That could hurt the baby, who knows?) or, even worse, never really enjoying parenthood because they spend every spare minute boiling pacifiers.
Hey! I wasn’t trying to judge you. I was just asking for more information. Thanks for the links.
from one of irishgirl’s links:
Sorry, I should use smileys.
Read it as
“I’m not a lush trying to justify my bad personal choices!:p”
I read your post exactly the way it was intended, rockypg.