Drinking alcohol and breastfeeding

[BunnytheFriendlyDragon]

The advice online about drinking alcohol and breastfeeding seems to be very inconsistent.

I have a ten week old who is almost exclusively breast fed. I've been out for lunch and had half a pint of fruit cider with food. It's the first drink I've had since finding out I was pregnant.

I did take a bottle and it being naptome I thought I might not need to BF for a few hours after the drink. However he woke up hungry and had a bottle but threw up a lot of it.

I have since BF him as he's hungry and he has had one bottle so not ideal to give him another. As I only had half a pint of a low alcohol drink I would have thought this is ok?

I don't plan to drink again soon as this has stressed me out!

I think I drank the drink 2-3ish and fed him when we got home at about 4 and again now .

From what I could see alcohol levels in the milk are the same as your blood? So roughly an hour per unit to be totally gone?

Did you use formula or expressed milk in the bottle? (Asking out of curiosity as I’m hoping to bf once baby arrives…but I’d assumed using bottles at times would make life easier)

It's fine, enjoy your drink :)

It’s fine
The rule of thumb is that if you’re sober enough to hold the baby, you’re sober enough to feed the baby - ie the risk from drinking is not from your milk but that you might drop him

It's fine.

Totally fine

Both totally fine, and well deserved!

It's absolutely fine!

I fed each of mine for 18 months and with my breastfeeding support group we used to go to the Wetherspoons after for food! We all had a glass of wine or 2!

The amount of alcohol that actually goes into breast milk is minimal...

Thank you!

@GallowwayGirl88 Formula. He had one (sometimes two) bottles of formula a day from being a few days old but that reduced to max one and occasional expressed milk and he hasn't had any bottle for two-three weeks until today.

I haven't expressed so took formula do the pub and have been thinking I'll come tI ur to give him an occasional bottle even if once a week as it's useful that he will take it and I know some EBF babies don't.

I think the risk is more to do with actually being in a fit state to look after the baby without dropping them, falling asleep holding them, cosleeping and squishing them etc rather than harm coming to them from drinking the breast milk.

I'm sure I've read somewhere that the amount of alcohol that actually passes through to the milk is negligible and you'd have to be absolutely hammered ie alcohol poisoning levels for it to do any damage.

Don't quote me on that though as it's not something I spent any real time looking into.

I've read things suggesting the alcohol does go into the milk but it dies seem like it's more of an issue if larger amounts/ longer periods.

I'm sure you're all probably right than half a pint of cider is fine abs it should be out of my system now anyway!