boozing and breastfeeding

[Caththerese1973]

Hi
my friend (this really is my friend, not me!) can't say no to getting pretty drunk about once a week, but is very anxious about breastfeeding her dd, who is fifteen months old and usually wakes once a night for a feed.
I said that I doubted that a baby of this age, who was mainly on solids, would be harmed by 'boozy' milk once a week.
Was I right? I'm not sure if my thoughts on this matter had any basis in medical fact.My friend claims that her little one tends to sleep pretty soundly after a drink of whiskey-laced breastmilk. But surely the amount of alcohol in the milk would be too low to have any effect?

[WigWamBam]

My dh's cousin used to have a glass of stout whenever she felt she needed her babies to sleep well - it always worked a treat!

Alcohol does pass into the breastmilk, but in moderation it shouldn't be a problem. I would thin that it's the "getting pretty drunk" that could be cause for concern - depending on how much she's actually drinking it might be better to pump and dump for a few hours after boozing and give expressed milk instead.

[aloha]

Pumping and dumping doesn't work WWB - the alcohol is coming from the bloodstream and milk is made to order so breastmilk has alcohol in it as long as your blood does (and you can't pump and dump blood!). It takes about three hours per unit of alcohol for it to clear out of breastmilk. So if you drink three small drinks in quick succession it will take about nine hours before you have totally alcohol-free breastmilk. Having said that, it does pass into breastmilk in pretty low concentrations and there is no scientific proof or any really convincing evidence that it does harm anyway. I am certainly not teetotal and have at least two largish glasses of wine a night (share a bottle with fast and greedy dh!) and dd (5months) wakes at 4amish for a feed so she gets a tiny bit of alcohol most nights, I suppose. So I doubt it does any harm, but if she's getting absolutely slaughtered, then yes, her daughter is getting alcohol in her system.

[WigWamBam]

I was thinking of the pumping and dumping more as a way of keeping up the milk supply while feeding EBM really, aloha.

[aloha]

oh i see - however if her dd is 15months suspect it is pretty well established

[aloha]

actually, I'd try to eliminate the night feed alotgether at this age- that would really solve the problem AND giver her a better night's sleep.

[WigWamBam]

Misread as 15 weeks

Time to get my eyes tested again ...