Alcohol and breast feeding

[Kent1982]

Hello

I have a 5 month old and am due to go to a party soon, this is the very first thing I have agreed to go to as am totally neurotic about th precious first born. I wondered if it might be ok to have a drink. I wasn't thinking anything wild, 3 glasses of wine an maybe just maybe a vodka tonic. I'm having dinner at this party too

My mum is baby sitting, I am working on expressing milk for him so she has a decent stash. And he will take the bottles as I give him one from time to time just to make sure he doesn't forget. I do have some of the ready made formula bottles that I bought just in case I needed them so I could give him one of them but he has never had one before.

I know the alcohol stays in the milk for a while but if I had finished drinking at say 11 would it be ok to give him the 6 am feed off me?

What does everyone else do?

( maybe drinking slightly less as could possibly get drunk on a csherry trifle)

Gosh yes, hardly any alcohol gets into the milk. According to a Dr friend of mine you would have to be legless for it to affect the baby!

Alcohol leaves the milk the same as the blood. So by 6am you'll definitely be good to go.

Absolutley fine. I used to have a couple of glasses and feed ds straight away

Oh fabulous I don't have a drink problem or anything but I am getting to be a bit of a hermit. I do have to leave the bambino at some point or I might want to breast feed him till he is 15 and because I go to things and don't drink at all I just leave at 9pm to go home and hang out with the boy lol

I always say if you're safe to drive, then you're safe to breast feed. The average person processes about a unit of alcohol every hour, so you should add an hour for each unit after you finish drinking. So if you have 3 glasses of wine at 2.5 units each and finish drinking at 11pm, you should be good to breast feed by 6am. However, th body actually starts processing the alcohol about an hour after you start drinking, so I usually count from when I finish my first drink.
To cut a long story short, basically yes you will be absolutely fine to nurse the following morning.

As far as I can understand it, blood alcohol level is about the same as breast milk alcohol level. So if your BAC is 0.08% (the legal driving limit) so is your breast milk. This is a TINY amount, 8/10,000 or 1/1,250 of the milk baby drinks. I don't see how this could affect a baby. By morning you will have no alcohol in your system unless you drink 7 units late at night.

I hope I haven't done the maths wrong-