Quick question about booze

[cyteen]

Hello all, just after a bit of advice. Am exclusively bf DS (11 weeks) and whilst I do love it, have decided to give myself the occasional night off so I can have a few drinks with DP or whatever. Tis the first time tonight; I've defrosted some EBM for DS to have in the night, but was wondering if I need to do anything about tomorrow morning e.g. pump and dump, or if I will be alright to feed him as normal.

Thanks!

What are you worried about exactly?

The amount of alcohol in breastmilk matches that in your bloodstream. You don't need to get rid of the alcohol by pumping and dumping - it will move out of your milk back into your blood as your liver does its work.

It's obviously personal opinion as to how much exposure your child gets, but you can put it into some perspective.

Let's say you drink a bit more than the drink-drive limit (ie to get to 0.08% of blood) - imagine that is a couple of large glasses of wine. To make calcs easier, say you drink a bottle of wine and have a 1% of alcohol in your blood.

The wine is 12% and it turns into 1% in your blood. You drink 750ml, and your baby drinks 150ml of breastmilk. Ignoring the actual quantities, assuming they are proportional to body size, your baby's intake is 1% vs your 12%. In your baby's blood, it will break down similarly (your baby does have a functioning liver), so will end up with a parts per million level of blood alcohol.

If you are feeding your baby every 3 hours, and drink at the start of that period, your body has 3 hours to break down any alcohol you drink - at 1 unit per hour.

yes, basically i want to know whether the alcohol hangs around in milk until the milk is released or if it dissipates throughout the night. so you are saying the latter?

(sorry, please forgive my extreme stupidity around the technical explanation )

It leaves your milk as it leaves your blood. Your milk doesn't hold onto it.

You will be fine tomorrow - only reason you might want to pump (but not necessarily dump) is if you get uncomfortably full through not doing the normal feeds. Enjoy!

Don't feel stupid - my MW told me I should pump and dump - it's only by reading MN that I know different.