Alcohol whilst breastfeeding

[Cheekylittlenumber]

Are there any definitive studies out there in relation to drinking alcohol and how much gets into your milk?

There is a useful table from Mother Risk in Canada - I'm on the iPad so difficult to link but google drinking alcohol when breastfeeding motherrisk. It shows you how little gets in, but also shows how long you need to wait before every last teeny bit is out.

I don't know any studies but I read your milk has the same alcohol content as your blood, so if you blew 0.02 on a breathalyser then that is the percentage of alcohol in your milk.

I also understood the amount in your milk to be as per your blood so extremely low. Therefore after first month or so - once feeding well established and baby putting on weight - I take the view it’s ok if you want to to drink sensibly and breastfeed (sensibly being you don’t get drunk, due to risk of nursing / parenting when drunk rather than alcohol in milk really).

Never co sleep after any alcohol.

I have been going on this information from La Leche www.laleche.org.uk/alcohol-and-breastfeeding/

Any studies are observational, of course, so will never have the quality of evidence you'd want to be really definitive... Like most aspects of having baby!

As PP says, alcohol level will be same as in blood, so taking the same approach to drinking as if you were planning to stay below the legal limit for driving is one approach.

That Canadian table is quite eye opening regarding metabolism of alcohol - slower than I would have thought.

I have a glass of wine if I fancy one and still feed but up until DD was 3 months old I used to test my milk with alcohol testing strips that I bought from Amazon. I was surprised at the low amount of alcohol in breastmilk tbh... I think I expected it to be the same as the wine but obviously it isn't. after testing (for science) I found that fresh orange juice can contain up to 0.5% alcohol but after a 175ml glass of prosecco there is nothing detectable in my breastmilk and only 0.02% after an additional 125 glass. It depends on your weight etc obviously.