Drinking alcohol when bfeeding. Whats the deal? Are you actually allowed to celebrate after all your hard work?

[Jellybabie3]

Just curious as yet again theres mixed info. DH wants to toast when baby gets here (40+2) but its fair to say if i can only sip i will end up more annoyed lol.

The problem with drinking is not that the baby gets drunk, but that it's really difficult to ensure the safety of a breastfed baby in the night if you're drunk. The guidelines say that you're never to cosleep if you've been drinking but the problem is that cosleeping, especially with baby number one in the early days, is rarely planned. In an exhausted state I've dropped asleep while sitting up in bed feeding a newborn and have woken with them lying in some form on my lap or worse, on the duvet. If I'd been drinking then I think I probably,wouldn't have woken up quite so easily.

So if I do have a drink I've always done it very early on in the evening and only ever had half a glass, and never with a really tiny baby. I've coslept all of mine until the next one has come along (seven years and counting ) and I've had a fair few glasses of wine in that time.

mama do you take your child in a car? It's a far bigger risk...

That's a ridiculous statement, there's a billion and 1 bigger risks. The point is, why not avoid the avoidable risks!

Driving your baby in a car is 9 times out of 10, completely avoidable.

But my point is that they're all avoidable risks. The thing you need to ask yourself is how risky are the risks. Drinking a small amount of alcohol whilst breastfeeding? Such a small risk you don't even need to worry about it. Driving in a car? A much bigger risk which you weigh up and (mostly) do anyway.

3 people get killed by vending machines a year. I don't worry if I want a cheeky chocolate bar. All risk is not equal.

I agree with Bertie: I'm still breastfeeding 3 years in and I think the "avoid all possible even theoretical risks when breastfeeding" is a messed-up attitude that impairs a lot of people from feeding as long as they want to and perpetuates the idea that bf is only for a few weeks/months.

When you are pregnant your baby shares your blood supply, so if your blood is 0.05% blood alcohol by volume, so is your baby's. OTOH to get that way you've been consuming beverages that are 5%, 12%, maybe even 40% ABV, but that drink has to be processed through your stomach and into your blood in the course of which it becomes far more dilute. So if your baby consumes milk at 0.05% ABV, (a non-alcoholic beverage, as PPs have noted), the amount that actually ends up in their bloodstream is going to be beyond miniscule, probably not even measurable.

The NHS may take their usual lowest-common-denominator advice of don't do it, because that's a legally safe position for them to take, which is understandable but still, IMO, kind of stupid. Heavy drinking and care of a newborn isn't a great idea, but the "risk" of a couple of drinks and breastfeeding is so small that it's basically invisible.

Even the NHS say that it's ok to drink alcohol and breastfeed!

I was always told by my HV that so long as you had someone else to look after the baby and that you ensured you didn't co sleep after alcohol then there is no issue, which is backed up by science. Pumping and dumping makes no sense at all. Being able to have a glass or two of wine without guilt certainly makes many people breastfeed for longer than they might have otherwise.

See this is what I mean @welshweasel! I'm an NHS employee myself and am all for taking measured risks (to the other responders I wasn't saying I'd never drink whilst breastfeeding!) My point is that we turn to the NHS for advice as it's a health issue and you would hope it's the best place to get solid advice from and yet the website vs what you're told by drs vs what you're then told at the classes by midwives seems to vary drastically so it makes it difficult to feel like you're making an informed decision. For what it's worth I'm happy to have the odd drink a week/ at Christmas, I personally agree with positive risk taking and think there's a huge difference between doing this and drinking 3 glasses of wine a night four times a week. Just wish there was more conclusive evidence as to the effects of alcohol in breastmilk as the limited research to date is all rather conflicting.

janice has it spot on. Breastfeeding makes you very sleepy anyway; it's so easy to fall asleep holding the baby. If I had a couple of glasses, i would not be able to look after a newborn properly. They often feed practically all night long in the early days.

If you do drink, do it in the daytime when someone can keep you company. I think the euphoria of birth is better than anything, anyway.

Hmm I clearly didn't get the memo about birth being euphoric. Maybe you got better drugs!

I never co slept or fell asleep holding the baby but did have a couple of glasses of wine a few times a week. Shock horror, we also used to go to the pub for lunch and share a bottle of fizz in the early days when my husband was off work too. And still managed to look after a baby perfectly well.

Driving your baby in a car is 9 times out of 10, completely avoidable

10/10 alcoholic drinks completely avoidable...

So do you also not make any not life-or-death car trips then Clara? The risk of disability or death from any random drive to the park being so much higher than the risk of feeding milk to your lo from a mother who'd had two gin and tonics or whatever.

I ordered euphoric and got barbaric. And that's why I drink

One thing worth noting is if you have more than one pregnancy it could be years of abstaining. With miscarriage, pregnancy, 18 mnths bfing then pregnant again I should have not had a single drop of alcohol since june 2014 and continue to abstain until I finish bfing this one around early 2019

Dumde, the point is, you don't know the risk of drinking whilst bfing. No one does.

If alcohol is a critical part of your life, like driving is for most people, then do it! It's not that important to me, so I don't. If you feel the need to justify your decision maybe you aren't as comfortable with it as you think you are...

I don't mean the actual giving birth process is euphoric... I mean afterwards!

Yeah I didn't get that. I got more 'shit this is tedious, what the fuck have I done?'. I found life with a newborn utterly dull and yet completely relentless. Wine helped!

Dumde, the point is, you don't know the risk of drinking whilst bfing. No one does.

Yes, and? I don't know the risk of eating shellfish while bfing. No-one does.

If it were a really significant risk, we would know. Because there would have been negative outcomes recorded. Babies have tragically died through suffocation after a mother fell asleep after drinking, but babies don't die or end up in hospital because of alcohol in breastmilk. Similarly, heavy drinking in pregnancy is known to be a risk, because women do it and their babies get FAS. OTOH, formula feeding is known to have a number of well-documented effects on infant health, so if you want to avoid all avoidable risks, well, you better bf exclusively for at least a year.

I feel pretty comfortable with my decision (and I really didn't drink much at all, I was too bloody knackered) but I disagree with and object to puritan think-of-your-baby rubbish that puts burdens on women that aren't justified by the evidence.

I am currently neither drinking more than once a month nor breastfeeding, so I don’t need to justify myself to anyone! However I did think you were peddling unscientific nonsense to others on this thread and that does make me want to present an opposing view.

I disagree with and object to puritan think-of-your-baby rubbish that puts burdens on women that aren't justified by the evidence. absolutely

as someone said upthread there are probably higher levels of alcohol in ripe fruit that you'd feed direct to an over 6 month baby than in breastmilk after a glass of wine.

If this helps... I live in Sweden, where there is a FAR stricter attitude to alcohol here (drinking AT ALL during pregnancy is a big no-no. Can only purchase alcohol to take home from state run shops. Alcohol is very expensive. Etc.) I just went on their equivalent of the NHS and even they say it's okay to have "one to two glasses of wine or equivalent one to two times a week. The amount of alcohol that the child can bring with the breast milk is so small that it can not in itself affect the child." (slightly dodgy Google translation there but you get the meaning.)

So from my perspective, as someone who has drunk zero alcohol for the last 37 weeks, if the strict Swedish healthcare system thinks it's okay, that's good enough for me.

I've been breastfeeding for nearly six years now - two different children, including a year tandem feeding.

If I hadn't had the occasional drink in that time, I suspect I'd have sold the children and ran away to Rio on the profits. Somehow, both of them seem to have survived the experience.

Many people would feed fruit to babies at four months. Indeed, this wouldn't be outside of current health guidelines! Yet women are told to pump and dump, which doesn't even make any sense.

I've not even given birth yet but plan on giving breastfeeding a go, although if it doesn't work out I'll happily go to formula, in fact I'll probably do both. But i know for sure that if breastfeeding meant i couldn't have a glass of wine, i definitely wouldn't be doing it! Whilst im so so happy and grateful to be pregnant, it's bloody awful and if im feeling this shit for 9 months im going to enjoy my glass of wine aswell as feeding my baby how i want to!
Very interesting reading though.