Is caffiene really that big if a problem?

[24hourM0MMY]

I know that too much is defo a bad idea, but for those who have given up completely, did you have a doctor tell you to cut it out or was it a personal choice? I'm currently 6 weeks and I cannot for the life of me stop that first morning cup of coffee. The rest if the day, i have no problem staying away. Is it really linked to early misscarriages?

And what yours Madre?

The problem I had with my baby right after she was born wasn't getting her to settle. It was getting her to stay awake through a nursing session. I ended up pumping milk and supplementing breastfeeding with that for the first couple of months. If the occasional latte in her bottle would have helped, I would have done that (and had some for myself, of course). Being cranky and hard to settle isn't the only problem that you can have with a newborn.

DH speculated, I'm not sure how seriously, that she didn't want to stop nursing later on because my milk had caffeine in it and she was addicted to it. But she did eventually quit nursing, around 20 months.

I would be very interested to know how much caffeine is too much to get a baby addicted. It's all good and well stating the guidelines but from your own experience that you keep mentioning lilliput how much is too much and why isn't caffeine intake asked about as much by health professionals?

geekymummy a lot of babies struggle to move from breast to bottle. Mine did and I know many other mums whose babies did. Caffeine can't be the sole prime suspect in all cases if any

Lilliput, I am actually a scientist and have rather a lot of qualifications, but since I'm not the one making outlandish claims that really isnt important.

OK, here is the evidence as collated by Cochrane Library.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006965.pub3/full

I have tried to reduce my caffeine intake whilst pg. However, I have around 100mg per day I think, either through tea or diet Pepsi or chocolate (combination. This is within the guidelines. It would be good to have none at all but I'm not perfect.

I hope the judgemental ones on the thread will be following all nhs /who guidelines perfectly, breastfeed for two years etc. Otherwise please accept we're none of us perfect.

Lilliput, you made claims about what you had personally experienced, cochrane reviews cant attest to your personal claims.

20 months is not that late to wean though. Plenty of babies are reluctant. The tasty tasty mummy milk and emotional high are "addictive"! I know loads of clean eating posh hippy mums who had the same.

wow, we are now comparing a cuppa with shooting up heroin really . I sincerely hope you aren't actually a mw lilput

What I have experienced and witnessed in practice is backed up by the evidence reported by the Cochrane Library which is neonatal withdrawal symptoms have been observed as a result of high levels of maternal caffeine intake (McGowan 1988). High levels are considered to be eight cups of coffee a day or 1000mgs of caffeine.

oh ffs that is a massive amount. What do you think that is adding to the discussion?

Oh, and I do discuss caffeine consumption with the women on my caseload

But only if they aren't heroin addicts presumably

I'm not sure I have anything sensible to say, but I just had to say that pbwer's post was the most unintelligible thing I've read in a while ;)

With regards to the caffeine-addicted babies, I'll add my twopence worth of anecdata. DD would have been a prime candidate for caffeine addiction, not because I couldn't kick the habit (in fact I pretty much totally gave up caffeine during the pregnancy), but because she spent two months on massive doses of it while in the neonatal unit. It's routinely given to very premature babies to help limit apnea spells. I'm happy to report that her behaviour didn't change in the slightest when she went cold-turkey.

Needless to day, I felt like a right turkey for carefully avoiding caffeine throughout my pregnancy, only to then end up with a 2lbs-something baby that had to be dose up with the stuff. I think the problem with all the food guidelines is that they implicitly overplay the risks of certain behaviours - regardless of what you eat, you're incredibly unlikely to catch listeriosis, for example. I suspect our current worries about caffeine fall under the same umbrella. On the other hand, very real risks (preterm birth, stillbirth, etc.) are implicitly underplayed. Did you know that, depending on the country, 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 births will be premature? I didn't either, before having my daughter. I appreciate that we're not very good at preventing preterm birth, while we're pretty good at preventing listeriosis, but I just hate that risks aren't properly represented to the public when it comes to pregnancy.

Cochrain is littered with words like "chronic" and "very high" use.

Not relevant to 1 cup a day.

It's like saying we should all have a bmi of under 23 upon conception because morbidly obese women are classed as high risk.

Cross post ... 1000mg so not really in the league the thread is talking about is it lilliput?

I guess I should have just said to the OP
Yes caffeine can be a big problem but don't sweat about your morning coffee and then I wouldn't have felt to attacked and the need to justify myself.

So what you're referring to is 5 times the recommended daily limit every single day!

That would have helped, yes, but I still wonder what the word 'big' is adding to 'problem' other than drama.

I don't mean to appear hostile but someone who isn't posting on this thread but has read it will have been worried totally unnecessarily.

Umm... yes!?

It would be like on a non pregnancy thread me pulling out my experiences with alcoholic parents, when the op was talking about a glass of wine a night. Without mentioning the quantities it could sound like one glass a night wrecks homes.

I give up.

Wow, just popped back on here to see if OP had any comments to make- but at madreloco.... I started my post by saying that it was my theory... In fact I deleted the bit where I said 'you can ignore it if you want to' because I thought that was too much - but I was proposing a theory and of course OP is welcome to ignore it. You say "You reckon you have seen newborns with caffeine withdrawal?" But no, I don't claim that! I proposed a theory! And as a scientist, you should know that all scientific research starts with theories, that are either proved, or disproved. And I did not claim to know for sure, I just explained my reasoning for believing what I do. I stand by my theory and without scientific evidence disproving it then I am happy to propose it as such. You ask me what qualifications to make those conclusions are? (Although they are not conclusions as I clearly stated it is a theory), will a BSc specialising in Developmental and Molecular Genetics do?

Madreloco was having a go at me Elsa when talking about newborns withdrawing from caffeine. I was trying to say the same as you but it all went wrong.