I have a 9-month-old DD who is breastfed. Since she’s been born, I’ve occasionally gone out for a couple of drinks with friends or had a couple of drinks at home with my husband. I’ve always tried to follow NHS guidance by waiting the allocated number of hours before feeding her again.
However, as time has gone on and she’s become more wakeful, she tends to feed quite frequently throughout the night. So when I have had a couple drinks she often wakes and wants to feed before the right amount of time has passed (according to the NHS) to do so. What I’ve tended to do the last couple of times is hold her, cuddle her and try to soothe her until enough time has passed for the alcohol to clear from my breast milk.
The problem is that she doesn’t settle very easily this way anymore. She is used to being settled by breastfeeding, so she’ll cry and cry until I can feed her again. It’s horrible for her, and horrible for me and my husband too.
My husband’s view is that I should just feed her rather than worrying so much about the amount of alcohol in the milk as it will be negligible. I have friends who do this with no worries but I’m struggling to know if this is the right thing and feel very guilty about the idea of it because of the NHS guidance.
I don’t drink heavily. It would only ever be two medium glasses of wine at a time a couple times a month. I’m new to the area I live in, keen to make friends and a lot of the social activities I’m invited to involve alcohol.
But I also don’t want to cause any harm
to my beautiful baby.
So what’s the general feeling on this? Is it ok?