I drank too much, then breastfed....

[HeavenlyWineandRoses]

I drank what I've now worked out to be 7 units of alcohol last night. I stopped drinking at 11pm, fed 5 month old baby briefly at 1am and for a long time at 4am. I am really hungover.

The context: it was my birthday; I didn't drink a drop in pregnancy and only thimbles of wine occasionally since. I had expressed milk for the 4am feed and baby.doesn't usually wake before then but she was up and refusing the bottle when I got in. She's the easiest baby in the world so I foolishly assumed she'd take the bottle of ebm but she didn't, despite my and the very experienced babysitter's best efforts.

I feel terrible. I think the golden rule is that you should treat bf like driving but I've researched and I wouldn't have been fit to drive until about 7am this morning so shouldn't have bf until then.

Not much point feeling bad now! I know I definitely did that once or twice. It's not ideal but as a one off it won't do any harm. Sounds like you deserved the night out, and there is a school of thought (that I hope is true) that if you're sober enough to hold your baby, you're sober enough to breastfeed. Don't stress it! Hope the hangover doesn't last too long.

Thank you. I was definitely sober enough to hold baby so any theories like that are very welcome.

Ive done it a fair few times.I thought only a little bit goes in the breastmilk?

I've done it too. Not often, but a couple of times. DD didn't seem to notice and had no ill effects so, although it's obviously not advisable to do it on a regular basis, I'm pretty sure you haven't broken your baby

Yup, I think you'd need to be so drunk that someone had to latch the baby to your unconscious form for it to be actually dangerous rather than just not ideal. Don't worry about it & hope you had a good night!

Heavenly it's a one off. Don't worry about it. Your baby will be fine.

Noone really knows how much alcohol goes into milk so I'm sure the guidelines err on the side of caution.

Yes, had a good night thanks but not so good as to be worth the hangover and guilt I'm now struggling with.

Actually, they do - it's directly related to the concentration in your blood, which is obviously much much less than in the original drink! So given that baby is drinking it and not mainlining it... But yes, I think the "safe to drive" guidelines are super duper cautious.

I've done it too , I think baby will be fine , as long as its not often which you have clearly stated its not x

Don't feel guilty! That may be the hangover talking! You have not poisoned the baby! Seriously, your milk was only very very very slightly alcoholic and there's no indication that would do any harm as a non-regular event. Otherwise the human race would have died off centuries ago...

(also I have totally done it too, the resulting 3 year old doesn't seem to have suffered/developed a taste for Bordeaux)

Thank you, lovely kind people.

There's no point worrying now! Anyway, seven units isn't a huuuuge amount. Assuming you're an "average" person, your body will process alcohol at a rate of about one unit per hour, so by the time you were feeding there were only five units left in your system, and that's assuming you necked all seven units at 11pm which I assume you didn't. And since only a small amount (as far as we know) is passed into breast milk, I'm sure you'll both be fine as long as you're not doing it all the time.

Wow, I did a lot of assuming in that post

Don't you count from when you START drinking not when you finish? If you started at say 7pm then by 4am if not all of it be cleared from your system then the vast majority would be I believe.

I am a pretty below average person size-wise so have assumed it will take a little longer for my body to metabolise the alcohol. I drank all the units between 9pm and 11pm but with food, although not very carby food which I assume (it must be catching!) would be better.

Still, baby is very happy and healthy today and I have a few social events coming up for which I've now had a very sobering lesson.

Only a tiny proportion of the alcohol gets into the milk anyway. Don't worry at all! There are far worse things that you could have ingested that would have passed more readily into your milk.

Don't beat yourself up, it happens. Did she sleep well ;0/