To think this woman is at best misguided and at worst disgusting?

[Totality22]

Will try to be brief.

I was introduced to a friend of a friend who is ebf her DS (about 10 weeks) and it came up in conversation that she drinks a bottle of wine in one evening once / twice a week. She was unashamed but made it clear she didn't neck it back (drinks it over the course 4-5 hours)

Once I picked my jaw up off the floor the conversation had moved on but I am still thinking about it days later.

I like a drink, can happily open a bottle and finish it the same evening [over the course of a good few hours, like the lady in question]. I had a glass of champers when 8 months pregnant so I am certainly not adverse to the notion of drinking / pregnancy / BF'ing.

AIBU to find this woman shocking though?

To not drip feed woman is a medical professional not trained in UK and currently a SAHP here, her husband is a Dr, she is not English [culturally I assume this may be relevant as maybe the info is different to here?], and she did this with her first baby who is now 5 and perfectly fine.

Thank you Cadie.

The diarrhoea wasn't a coincidence at all - although I did assume that for a fair few times, hence why I repeatedly did it!

Just to add, it was only if I drank 10+ units. Half a bottle of wine was fine but I'm going by the OP initial question

Minty - in pregnancy 100% of the alcohol in maternal blood passes via the placenta, into the foetus's blood.

With breastfeeding they're having the alcohol content in the blood as a drink which is in pretty homeopathic quantities once it reaches the baby's blood stream. Sure, their livers are comparatively immature but they're still able to tolerate tiny amounts of alcohol (and a whole heap of medications if they're unwell or premature or both).

I don't drink at all when pregnant but do, a bit, whilst breastfeeding. I breastfeed for a long time though. I get annoyed by some of the advice re breastfeeding i.e. if your baby was unsettled overnight it must have been what you ate the night before. Some poor women struggle along eating fuck all for no reason. Suspected CMPA is different and it's always worth a trial of going dairy/soy free if things are desperate but even then the advice is dodgy sometimes with women going lactose free instead and thinking it's the same thing (there's lactose in human milk).

Alcohol doesn't stay in your stomach though, it travel through to your blood stream.

Yes, but the alcohol level of your bloodstream is not the same as the alcohol level of your stomach contents, which is what matters.

Fresh orange juice contains alcohol, but we don't suggest that mothers who give their children orange juice are endangering them...

I was told by a lactation consultant (iblcc) that it's fine to drink up to the normal recommended alcohol intake while bfing.

I didn't have any alcohol (or caffeine) while pregnant, it's a totally different issue.

It takes a little while for any trace of alcohol to get through to your milk, its not like she is feeding her baby neat red wine.

Well I must say this thread has been an education to me.

I honestly had no idea that it was absolutely fine to drink a whole bottle of wine over the course of 4-5 hours whilst breastfeeding.

Perhaps HQ could get their junior staff to collate all this statistically proven anecdotal evidence into some sort of clickable link (like the ovulation date or due date calculator thingies) so that we don't need to have tiresome threads about how much alcohol is ok to drink while breastfeeding in future.

It's not your business, OP.

Well I don't think MN really need to do that, because there are countless threads with repeated information that happen every week. There are several well respected sources of BF info online though which do have this information, LLL has been linked on this thread. Jack Newman linked to a (very small scale, as in one woman, so nothing statistically significant) study where one woman measured the alcohol content of her own expressed milk - in this case in fact the alcohol content was lower than is estimated taking the 1:1 bac:milk ratio. The Drugs in Breastmilk helpline run by the Breastfeeding Network (the highest authority on this kind of thing in the UK - they collate and analyse all available data) has a fact sheet on it on their website, Kellymom has a page, Analytical Armadillo has a post on it.

Now actually in the course of checking this, I did find this important factor: "Chronic consumption of alcohol is more likely to cause harm than occasional social drinking"

I hadn't really registered that in the OP. That would indeed be an issue. While I will defend indefinitely the fact that a one off event of drinking one bottle of wine is unlikely to be of any consequence, repeated regular drinking, we don't know the effects of and could be far more serious.

In general I would like less scaremongering though, not more.

Well the pertinent facts that op is concerned about are the amount and frequency of alcohol consumption, not alcohol consumption per se.

So if you hadn't clocked that from OP then you are singing from some other hymn sheet Bertie.

From the breastfeeding networks information sheet....

'The effect of maternal consumption of alcohol is insignificant except at high or regular consumption levels.

Breastfeeding mothers can have occasional, small amounts of alcohol but should not drink regularly or heavily (e.g. binge drinking) without considering how to limit the baby’s exposure'

I'd say a bottle of wine = high consumption/binge drinking.

Here you go - there is research into the effects on infants. This is from the Analytical Armadillo post on alcohol. The Hale book mentioned is the international standard in breastfeeding research concerning medications and other substances which pass into milk.

Ethanol - the chemical name for alcohol - is approved by the American Academy of Pediatricians for use during lactation.

Hale (Dr Thomas Hale in Medications and Mothers Milk, international research based textbook) found that a mother needs to have a blood level of 300 mg alcohol per decilitre of blood before her infant shows significant side effects (mainly sedation).

The legal drink driving limit in the UK is 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.

100ml is a decilitre so this means you would have to have consumed between 3 and 4 times the legal limit for driving before the alcohol you were drinking had significant effects on your baby.

To put that into another context, from the wikipedia article on blood alcohol content again.

Symptoms at 200-299mg per dl, or 0.2-0.299% BAC:
Nausea
Vomiting
Emotional swings
Anger or sadness
Partial loss of understanding
Impaired sensations
Decreased libido
Possibility of stupor

Symptoms at 300mg+ (0.3-0.399% BAC)
Stupor
Central nervous system depression
Loss of understanding
Lapses in and out of consciousness
Low possibility of death

This appears to be the study relating to the 300mg figure, but I can't be 100% sure.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199110033251401

Yes, I would too. No getting round the fact that a bottle of wine is a binge.

I dunno. TBH a lot of posters were talking about alcohol consumption in general while BF, not regular alcohol consumption. The usual thing you hear is that alcohol is a no no while BF, similar to pregnancy. It's a myth I dislike because I think it puts people off BF or leads to earlier weaning.

But yes I do take the point that there may have been a few crossed wires on this thread.

But crossed wires are important.

Op is talking about binge drinking while breastfeeding.

Not the same as having a drink or two while breastfeeding.

Renders the thread meaningless if people can't stick to the pertinent facts.

The OP branched out into talking about drinking at all in breastfeeding later on in the thread.

I agree Mintyy

I call a bottle of wine a binge. Binge drinking twice a week, week in and week out - I find that a bit shocking,and for a parent of a small child even more so. Even understanding how much alcohol passes through to breastmilk, I find it shocking as it is shocking before factoring in BF.

I'm not a big drinker and don't associate with any big drinkers, so I would be shocked to hear that level of drinking in a friend of a friend.

Binge drinking is not the same thing as regular drinking, though. As a one off it wouldn't do any harm at all.

I know it's over the recommended amounts, but really - who drinks the "recommended amounts" when they are having a night in/out/whatever? Yes I suppose it is a binge, but a binge is just that - occasional and unusually large, not normal. If it's routine AND in large amounts that's a different thing. But a large amount occasionally is what a lot of people do, and it is okay to do that while breastfeeding. You don't have to stick to 1-2 glasses.

The thread isn't meaningless at all. Lots of threads branch out, it's what happens.

Yanbu, OP.

OP YABU.

Thank goodness there are so many sensible posters on this thread. No wonder only 1% make it to 6 months if BF Mums think they can't drink.

If the Mum in question is able to still care for her baby then whatever she is drinking is fine.

I studied the research and didn't touch a drop while pregnant, but after the birth if I fancied a drink I had one in whatever quantity I wanted. I wouldn't still be BFing now at nearly 22 months if I had to stay on the wagon.

I have never understood what it is about alcohol that people (and I don't include alcoholics in this) can't go without? Is it some kind of necessary drink that people need to survive??

I still BF my DS who is 13 months and I haven't touched alcohol since he was born because of this. When I stop BF'ing then I will have alcohol again if I want to, but going without it is hardly a sacrifice of any sort.

A previous poster said it was no wonder not many women make it to 6 months of breast feeding if they think they can't have alcohol for all the time and I think if a woman chooses not to breast feed because she can't cope with the thought or practicality of not being able to have alcohol for such a tiny window of time then that's quite disheartening.

Alcohol does pass into milk.
The bigger risk with drinking is inadvertantly falling asleep with baby when under the influence.

But that's just how you feel about alcohol Writer.

I also bf my son until 13 months and didn't restrict myself to no booze. I love the taste of alcohol, in the same way as I enjoy the taste of chocolate.

It's a simple pleasure for me, something to look forward to at the end of a day looking after an infant!

And its also ok to do so and is safe for your baby!

If still being able to enjoy a drink helps mums keep breastfeeding for longer then that's a good thing.