To think this is dangerous advice from a midwife?

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Hi All,

Caught up with one of my friends earlier today. She told me she is pregnant. Earlier than the 12 weeks, and I confessed I am too! Lovely stuff.
Then she told me she had already had an appointment with her midwife and it didn't go well, mostly because my friend told her she would like to breastfeed her baby and then made a joke about it being years to wait for a glass of wine. The midwife told my friend that the guidance has changed, she said she didn't need to wait, as soon as the baby has been born she can drink. Infact, she literally said she can drink and drink and drink until she is wasted. The caveat was though that she would need to be not too far gone so that she couldn't hold her baby - holding the baby seemed important, being drunk whilst breastfeeding her baby was completely fine. But being wasted was ok because it didn't affect the milk, was absolutely fine to be off her face.
I have my first appointment next week and I'll be asking my midwife the question. But I was always under the impression any drink would enter your bloodstream and into your milk as well as potentially affecting your milk supply.
Are we both being unreasonable to think this is not only dangerous advice but completely unacceptable?

You can drink while breastfeeding. The amount of alcohol in your milk with you flat out drunk would be less than in orange juice. Though you can choose not to if youd prefer that.

The bigger risk is caring for a baby drunk, and accidentally falling asleep holding them etc.

yes midwife is correct. i drank whilst breastfeeding. but not so i couldn't look
after my baby. so i probably would have a couple of medium glasses of wine of an evening, if i was in the mood. i breasted 4 children for a total of about 8 years..
no waywas was i giving up wine for that long! my 4 all seem very healthy now!

It's true that only absolutely miniscule amounts of alcohol actually get into the blood stream and this would have reduced even further by the time your body has produced milk from the blood. Even at the drink drive limit, your blood alcohol level is 0.08% which is about the same amount of alcohol as there is in orange juice. However when I was breastfeeding I saw this as a justification for drinking far too much and looking back I think it had a really bad effect on my sleep and mental health. It also affects your decision making. Lots of breastfeeding mums co-sleep, which you should never do when you've had a drink, but if your baby doesn't sleep in a crib then you really need to plan carefully if you do intend to have a drink.

It is NOT the same. When pregnant the baby has the same intoxication level as the mother’s blood. When a baby drinks breastmilk the alcohol level entering the baby is orders of magnitude lower, a trace amount like one would find in fruit juice, even if the mother is extremely heavily intoxicated. This is a scientifically proven fact.

I do find it ridiculous when you are claiming something physically impossible, yes.

Yep, that’s precisely what I’ve been talking about: the NHS publishing unscientific “guidelines” and information. They also do this about the relative risks or vaginal vs caesarian births, and multiple other issues related to pregnancy and other entirely unrelated matters. It’s shockingly negligent that they fail to update their published information, guidelines and staff training to ensure that it doesn’t contradict published, peer reviewed, verified and well-established clinical research, often decades after it is established that their guidance is factually wrong.

The have done this in numerous other cases as well. Like pretending that ME/CFS was a mental illness not a physical one for decades after the WHO and medical journals and pretty much every other country recognised that it was a biological immune and nervous system disorder, per the evidence.

And their false claims until recently exaggerating the risks of HRT and denying it to women to whom it was proven it would have benefitted.

The refusal to add chickenpox vaccines to the schedule of standard childhood vaccines for nearly 50 years after other countries did so because they are low risk and cheap and the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Continuation of prescribing a long list of different drugs for different conditions to patients long after it was proved that they had horrendous side effects and other countries banned them, or continuing with treatments that other countries had banned because they either didn’t work/ had huge health risks to patients far outweighing any supposed benefits, or prescribing medications and treatments for which there was never any robust evidence in the first place causing immense harm: there is a very long list of numerous other similar instances of similar negligence yet there’s never any accountability and they continue the same way. They’re currently paying out £3.2bn per year for such negligence and most people don’t want the hassle of prosecuting or are bullied out of it so in reality the figure should be several times that.

“Healthcare” in the UK is a joke and I wouldn’t trust anything an NHS nurse/ doctor told me.

Surely to god a woman can manage to go without alcohol whilst breastfeeding?

Agree 100% this, and the poster upthread getting angry with the "best not take the risk" attitude foisted on women without pointing out that the risk is so tiny as to negligible, at least compared with everything else in life. There is greater risk to the child every time it's strapped into a properly fitted top of range of carseat in a car that tops the safety ratings, driven at a steady pace by a sober, careful, experienced driver. But it's convenient for society for women to drive and take their babies with them, so meh. But a woman having a glass for wine purely for her own pleasure... GASP...HOW DARE THE SELFISH COW RISK HER CHILD.

Other forms of looking after yourself are encouraged. Such as "having a bath" (how decadent) and perhaps "going to the gym" (get back on the treadmill of self improvement, ladies). Personally I had the occasional glass of wine whilst breastfeeding and started my new very maternity leave- friendly hobby of studying racing form and backing horses online.

@LifeOnEnceladusabsolutely agree. The NHS have a shocking history of issuing out of date guidelines.

@LowlandLuckywhy should they, when there is no evidence of it being harmful to the baby?

Indeed. Evidence does help.

If people are capable of understanding it.

When a woman is pregnant her level of intoxication (mg of alcohol per ml of blood) will be the same as the blood alcohol level (i.e. intoxication) of her baby. As someone stated above, the drink drive limit, to give you a reference point, is 0.08mg/ 100ml blood.

When a woman is breastfeeding this is the level of alcohol that will transfer into her milk (the same level that is in her blood). The baby drinking it does NOT transfer that level of alcohol into the baby’s own blood stream! Surely this is obvious to anybody with even a basic grasp of science?!?!? I’m not sure how much more clearly it can be explained than it has been already numerous times on this thread but apparently some people still don’t understand it. 😆🤦🏻‍♀️

All of the blood in your body doesn’t suddenly become 35% alcohol if you drink a glass of vodka which is 35% alcohol. Otherwise it would kill you. Neither does a baby’s blood alcohol level become 0.08mg/ 100ml because it drinks breastmilk with that trace level of alcohol in it. Drinking a liquid with a trace level of alcohol in it (as many “non-alcoholic” foods and drinks contain) is NOT THE SAME as having that level of alcohol in your bloodstream (due to you having drunk something with a far higher alcohol content).

Rather, the baby is drinking a liquid (the mother’s milk) which contains an alcohol level of 0.08mg/ 100ml. For reference, fruit juice generally contains 4-6mg of alcohol per 100ml i.e. 50-75 times as much alcohol as a mother’s breast milk if she breastfeeds straight after breaching the drink drive limit of alcohol. So unless the mother is injecting her blood into her baby’s veins rather than breastfeeding it, the baby’s mg/ml alcohol is NOT that same as the mother’s because she is breastfeeding it. To claim this is the case is utter nonsense and impossible.

It is categorically impossible for this trace level of alcohol in breast milk to cause ANY harm to a baby: an alcohol level 50-75 times lower than thag present in numerous foods which people feed to babies once they start weaning at 6 months. The mother could consume an entire bottle of vodka and the baby would still be drinking breastmilk with an alcohol content over 20 times lower than the alcohol in a glass of orange or apple juice.

It is appalling, and it makes me furious that women are being failed at such a vulnerable time in life where they need to trust their medical staff to provide them with accurate and clear information. It’s shameful.

Why should she?!

I was told no more than two units at a time, once or twice a week. So I would have one fruity cider which was exactly 2 units of alcohol if I wanted a drink.
This was a decade ago.

That’s also completely invented and arbitrary.

You were not there smelling the bottle of milk. I was. 🤷‍♀️

It seems to have got you unnecessarily upset that some women are making a choice not to drink while BF. Why is that? Is your own relationship with alcohol a problematic one?

Exactly. It’s astonishing that so many posters, and apparently even medical staff, seem unable to comprehend this proven fact.

What a pathetic comment. No. I do not “have a problem with alcohol”. I am long past breastfeeding so have no “skin in the game”. I dislike new mothers who are often vulnerable being misinformed by healthcare staff they should be able to trust to give them accurate and objective information, made to feel guilty/ shamed for or discouraged from doing things that are perfectly safe and having their lives made needlessly restricted/ difficult or giving ammunition to the busybodies who feel it is their business to judge mothers for doing perfectly normal and safe things, as many posts on this thread exemplify.

You go around smelling breastmilk if you wish. As stated, your claim is scientifically impossible. If you’d drunk an entire bottle of vodka you would not be able to smell alcohol in your breastmilk.

The human olfactory threshold for being able to detect alcohol in a liquid via smell is roughly 0.66% ABV and for breastmilk to contain that much alcohol you’d need to be 6.5 times over the drink driving limit, even at the very most sensitive level of olfactory sensitivity.

So even with a keen sense of smell, your story is scientifically impossible and what you smelled was most likely the alcohol on your own breath/ emanating from your own body. Or your story is entirely made up. But either way, you did not “smell alcohol in the breast milk” from having a couple of drinks because it is not physically possible.

It was probably founded in research at the time, but the advice given by midwives and health visitors is ever-changing.

OK.

You have been well and truly outwitted.

@LifeOnEnceladus you are my hero, for all your extremely articulate responses on this thread

This afternoon my friend popped over and we read through all of your responses together.
She said the midwife didn't say she should get wasted, just that there's no harm to the baby drinking her milk if she did. Which seems to be the resounding advice coming from almost all of you.
There is clearly conflicting advice on this subject, hence the much bigger response and debate I anticipated. If it truly was ruled 20+ years ago it was safe to drink and breastfeed it hasn't filtered through thoroughly enough because I was informed it was harmful, as was my friend in her pregnancies. The science, however, disproves this and I'm very grateful I questioned it here.
My friend will not drink and breastfeed - her body and baby her choice. I, however, may choose to depending on sleeping arrangements. I was never a big drinker anyway before pregnancy, maybe 2 or 3 drinks a month, but after 9 months of restriction to ensure our babies are happy and healthy it's certainly nice to know birthdays, Christmas or parties I can enjoy a drink breastfeeding or not.

Not at all. I know what I experienced. That is all I ever stated. I haven't told anyone what to do with that. It wasn't my breath I was smelling otherwise I would have detected it long before walking downstairs, opening my fridge and then opening the bottle of milk. I don't know why it smelled so strongly but I know it did. The baby in question is now 21 and doesn't seem to have suffered for me choosing not to drink while BF after that, so I also have no skin in this game.

If that upsets people to the point that they have to keep posting refutations against my personal experience, that is on them. I cannot stop them.

I have to be honest I’m stunned by the amount of people who think even a tiny amount of alcohol in a baby’s milk is ok. I never drank whilst breast feeding and I really think if you can’t stay away from alcohol for the sake of a newborn baby then you have a drinking problem and need help with that.

P.s. the comparison to orange juice is absurd, you don’t give newborns orange juice either