alcohol and b'feeding. honest opinions please!

[sallycinamon]

Fully feeding my 11 week old dd2 and it's all going well. She is thriving - contented, sleeps fairly well etc. However occasionally I have a guilt attack because almost every night since her birth I have had a smallish glass of wine. hv wasn't concerned when I confessed this to her but don't have much faith in her really! Midwife friend didn't seem concerned either. One friend said she wouldn't do it.

Not sure what to think. Am I being a terrible, irresponsible mother?!

It's not even the amount you drink to be honest. A drink will make your blood/ BM have the equivalent alcohol levels as OJ. Even if you are over the limit to drive you have about two glasses of OJ (double the amount of alcohol) in your blood. You would have to have 0.2% (approx 20 units) in your blood to pass out. So really we're talking about minute levels actually being in your blood or BM.

Well I have to say I have never noticed any effect on my LOs after I have drunk alcohol. These stories of babies being asleep for 24 hours after their mothers got drunk must be urban myths.

When you say milk is made to order, not stored, how does that work? Surely the milk is not made the minute the baby sucks? If so why do breast get engorged? Is that not milk being stored by the breasts?

Our NCT breastfeeding counsellor said to do it right before a feed so the alchol doesn't have time to make its way into the milk.
She then went on to say that the amount transmitted into milk was actually so negligable that unless you are really overdoing it then there is nothing to worry about.
I happily took her advice and say no effects.

Am off to get stuck into the OJ!

I bf'd both of mine for 2 years each and frequently enjoyed a glass of wine or two during those four years. The only thing I ever wondered about was whether it actually had an effect on the taste of the milk: i.e. will I have given the dcs a taste for wine (and guinness)...

There is some milk in there. It's a bit like spitting I guess, you have some saliva in your mouth and when you spit it out some comes to replace it, as long as you aren't dehydrated you could do it for awhile. Your body knows when it will be asked for milk and makes some up to get started, if you're late feeding then you'll get uncomfortable, but once you get started on the feed it will be made as needed. It's like a tap, turn it on and it will come.

interesting, I always wondered how exactly making milk worked . so do you think that you burn the famous 500 calories every time you feed or is just once a day that you burn 500 calories? always wondered about that one too....

I think it's over the course of a day with a newborn, it goes down as they get older. There are cleverer people than me on here when it comes to breastfeeding (I feel positively stoopid on here sometimes because people know so much it makes me realise how little I know)