Breastfeeding and alcohol.

[prufrock]

I feel terrible for saying this, but I want a drink! My daughter is 4 months old, I was breastfeeding exclusively until I came back to work 2 weeks ago. She now has one bottle of expressed and one formula during the day, and breast the rest of the time. I am going to a big party tonight, and I want to get drunk. It's been over 18 months since I was last drunk so plaese don't judge me to harshly!
My husband will be looking after her whilst I am out, and I have expressed milk for him to ffed her. My question is, if I drink say 8 units, when will it be safe for me to breastfeed again without getting my daughter drunk?

Loved Willow2's story. On the lines of what can go through into the milk, my sister's ante-natal class were told that eating grapes and strawberries could affect the milk and give the baby a stomach upset. 'Oh' piped up one woman , 'I can see that with grapes the pips would upset the baby, but what's wrong with strawberries?'. Still makes me wince at the thought of grape pips 'going through'!

LOL copper, thinking back now to the things my boy is allergic to, milk, egg etc. my health visitor said that when I was BF him this could have upset him - do u think this is true?

Thank you all for you advice - and for letting me know that wanting alcohol does not make me a bad mother!
I had a wonderful night, drank 2 vodkas and 3 big glasses of wine and went home tipsy but not absolutely bladdered. I then made teh big mistake of deciding I just had to kiss dd goodnight so woke her up by switching on the light in her nursery (but it only took a quick cuddle from dh to put her back to sleep - still don't think I was in his good books)
This morning I did pump and dump and fed her on expressed milk, and now she's at nursery so I won't feed her again until 6.30pm, when I figure I should be alcohol free. So altogether it was OK - except I have now remembered what a hangover is like and am seriously considering giving up alcohol for good (Yeah right!)

Glad you had a good time Prufrock.
Loved the great story Copper. Reminds me of a toddler who had been weaned onto a diet consisting mostly of chips and was getting very fat. The Health Visitor said to the mum "I think we have to be careful about all these chips" To which the mum replied "it's okay I always cut off the sharp corners"

Definitely did notice a difference in my dd the next day if I'd had a glass of wine the night before : she would always sleep for hours and I'd find it difficult to wake her up. It was as though she was drugged. I only ever had the 1 unit (or even less) but it always had this effect.

Needless to say, I didn't think this too good for her and cut out all alcohol. It doesn't sound like this applies to most people, though.

This is very interesting. My FIL is one of the UK's premier researchers into Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. He used to take the line that you shouldn't drink anything, but over the years has changed his ideas - it was him who phoned me up when 4 months pg with dd and told me to start drinking 1/2 pt of Guiness 3X per week. And he's even more relaxed about drinking and feeding, says there's very little gets into the milk (which fits with what tiktok said).
So hooooooray for the FIL and cheers to the black Dublin beverage!

I drank at least a couple of glasses of wine every day whilst breast feeding - for 8 months - maybe that's why my DS loves the odd slurp of beer from his dad or sip of wine from me!!

I know we SHOULD all be 'careful' - but there was none of this research years ago and I am pretty sure lots of our mothers were happily drinking spirits when they were pregnant, I know mine was!!

Regarding drinking when you are pregnant - if you don't know you are pregnant, as I didn't - you can quite easily keep on drinking until you find out (10 weeks in my case!!) & then the damage is done.

Cheers ........... off to fill my glass!

I've also not let bf stop me from drinking. I have 2/3 glasses of wine drunk fairly slowly over an evening with food. Sometimes on special occasions got a bit tipsy. Both my children are extremely healthy. Like most things in life you should enjoy yourself but be sensible about it.

BTW that is only some evenings not 2-3 glasses every evening!

HI Eulalia, nice to have you back. Not seen you in a while. How's the new babe?