To drink when breastfeeding?

[Dutch212]

Ok, I keep reading conflicting advice. Please tell me, can I drink alcohol? If so how often and how much? Thanks

[Crunchymum]

Well as my DC2 has decided to feed well beyond 6m (she is 18m and still a boon fiend) I drink and feed.

I never drink to excess. But I do have a generous glass of wine with dinner most evenings. More on occasion

[Crunchymum]

• boob fiend. Not had any wine tonight!!

[BertieBotts]

It's not as simple as "as much as you like" but it's also not as restrictive as only 1-2 units in one go. This is what some organisations advise but they are being overcautious, and also spreading the normal safe drinking recommendations apply which is up to 14 units a week. It doesn't really matter if you have 7 units in one go as a one off. Obviously, there are other concerns related to alcohol consumption such as whether you are responsible enough to care for a baby, whether you can safely drive if you needed to take them to A&E etc, but the responsible person doesn't have to be you particularly. Co-sleeping has already been mentioned several times - very dangerous if you've had even a small amount of alcohol. Make sure baby is in their cot. So it might be a bad idea to drink if you're likely to bring your baby into bed during night feeds for example, especially if you drink enough to impair your judgement. But you know your own tolerance and levels and should make the judgement yourself. There is not really a hard limit of how much is too much.

It would be a bad idea to drink an entire bottle of vodka in one go and then breastfeed. It would also be bad to be constantly sipping alcohol every day - both alcoholic levels of drinking, basically.

Your alcohol tolerance may be lower than you expect if you haven't drunk in a long time so bear that in mind too.

I also found the chart on the wikipedia article about blood alcohol content useful. I'm doing driver's education at the moment too and although the article puts the rate of loss at 0.01% per 40 minutes they advised us to calculate it as 0.01% per hour. It's easier to calculate and it adds a margin of error.

[NeckguardUnbespoke]

so at the drink drive level we're talking 0.8% alcohol,

The UK limit is 80mg per 100ml of blood. If you assume alcohol and blood have the same density as water, which for a back of the envelope calculation is close enough, 100ml of water weighs 100g. 0.8% of 100g is 800mg, or ten times the UK drink drive limit. At the drink drive level we're talking 0.08% alcohol.

[blueturtle6]

I used to measure out 100ml and have a glass at weekends with her evening feed. Was just enough to chill out and felt like a treat.

[BertieBotts]

Oops not sure what the phantom "apply" was about :)

[BeyondVulvaResistance]

When you have drunk enough to be dead through alcohol poisoning, your milk with have about the same concentration of alcohol as orange juice. Happy for children to have orange juice? Then no problem.

Just don't drop the baby! (Or cosleep, but I did )

[MotherofPearl]

When I had my first DC 8 years ago, the midwife at the NHS ante-natal classes I attended answered this question by saying, very memorably, 'If you're sober enough to sit up, you're sober enough to breastfeed.'
I am currently bf DC3 and do have a couple of glasses of wine a week, but not if we're co-sleeping.

[glueandstick]

Don't go overboard. Hangovers with small children are the work of the devil.

[sykadelic]

Out of interest, you CAN buy test kits to test the alcohol content of your breast milk. These are useful as every person metabolizes alcohol differently.

Here's one I found with a quick Google: www.amazon.com/Milkscreen-Detect-Alcohol-Breast-Strips/dp/B000UEA96G?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

That one (above) only has 8 test strips so I'd drink what you feel is "normal", wait a certain time frame that you think you'd wait and then express and test the milk. If you drink more another time then do the same thing.

[BertieBotts]

That's just a plus or minus, though. It doesn't tell you actually how alcoholic the milk is. A tiny percentage of alcohol is like one shot of vodka in a full bath. It's negligible.

A comment on the AIMS (Association for Improvements in Maternity Services) has this to say on the topic of those strips:

"These magic strips of course do not tell you what, if any, harm it might do, or that formula is also full of potentially harmful additives, or that if you are parenting whilst severely impaired due to alcohol, the levels in your milk might be less of a concern than being responsive to your baby. This is a gadget that preys on women's concerns about doing the best for their baby, feeds into the misconception that breastmilk may not be best and into the myth that breastfeeding stops you from going out and having fun. Alcohol concentration in milk is roughly the same as the alcohol concentration of the blood plasma generating the milk. 0.5% blood plasma alcohol is a deadly level, yet drinking a liquid with a 0.5% alcohol content will have little or no effect. A person with a 0.1% blood concentration of alcohol is likely to be intoxicated, 0.08% blood alcohol content is the UK's drink driving limit. However, 0.1% alcohol is the level of alcohol that occurs naturally in fresh orange juice. These strips detect alcohol at 13.1mg/dL; 100mg/dL would be equal to a 0.1% concentration of alcohol, so it would seem that they are encouraging women to worry over an alcohol level that may be undetectable in their baby."

[nutbrownhare15]

Cosleeping means sleeping in same room as baby. Do people really mean bedsharing here?

[PotteringAlong]

Co-sleeping = bed sharing yes.

[Idontknowwhoiam]

Co sleeping means sleeping in the same bed...

[BertieBotts]

It means bedsharing in baby care circles. It can also mean sofa sharing and other sleep-surface sharing which is why the term co-sleeping.

[Flowersonthewall]

Well I've just had a lovely chilled glass of prosseco and fed my 1 week old. Won't have any more as I'm off to bed when she goes down again but I'm happy to have a drink once or twice a week and still breastfed