I've done it. I preferred to wait til DS was asleep, or while he was with someone else, but I've had a few with him around too. I just do prefer not to feed if it can be helped. Or only have very few over time. I did the pump & dump when DS was younger, but the alcohol doesn't leave your BM til its left your blood stream, which could be 24 hours later anyway.
I think its your choice
Shell, new guidelines on drinking and bfing were released late last year. The basis of the guidelines is that abstaining from alcohol is always the "best" option, but that drinking in moderation and continuing to bf your baby is safer for your baby than formula. As someone else raised, the issue of being able to care for you baby safely when you drink is really a bigger issue.
Not judging anyone - just a question if anyone can answer - if what you say about the amount of alcohol in the blood and the milk being the same and therefore not dangerous unless you are pretty well dead -
Why then is it considered dangerous to drink before baby is born - if the amount in the blood then would be the same as the amount in the milk after?
Seems a bit odd to me that it would be considered okay after birth.
Ausgirl, drinking while pg is a very different situation. The alcohol gets to the baby through the placenta and has been definitely shown to be harmful to a developing foetus. Alcohol gets into breastmilk by a different mechanism and the amount of alcohol that gets in there is less than what goes through the placenta. Also, I'm sure it makes a difference that a baby is not still a developing foetus.
In pregnancy baby is getting your blood too, so baby's BAC would be the same as yours. Drinking that percentage is nowhere near as strong as it being transfused straight into the blood stream.
when DS was sleeping for 4-6 hours for his first sleep of the night, i had a couple of glasses of wine. now that he's back to 2 hourly wake ups & he wants to be fed back to sleep, i'm not drinking alcohol. i've never had more than 2 glasses of wine/champers though because of the risk mentioned above of being in a good state to care for your baby. not to mention that they have no idea if you have a hangover & won't sleep in to let you sleep it off!
When you are pregnant, bub shares your blood and so if your blood alcohol is 0.05, then bub's is too. 1) they are going through massive development and this level of alcohol in a little person has greater impact than a grown adult. 2) certain periods of time are when greater development is occuring, or greater development that may be affected by alcohol consumption, and these vary somewhat betweeen babies- so it's hard to predict on which day a drink will have an effect and when there will be no effect to the bub.
When you are breastfeeding, and your blood alcohol is 0.05, then your milk would be 0.05, and so bub is having a drink that contains 0.05% of alcohol. This amount of alcohol is then filtered through all of the blood volume of the baby which means the babies blood alcohol level is much lower than 0.05.
I have one or two when DS is sleeping his longest sleep of the night. I will only have a few in case something were to happen and I had to drive somewhere.
I had a thought, with the drinking during pg too, besides the fact feotus' are still developing in the womb and can develop abnormalities as a result of alcohol poisoning, bubs organs (liver and kidneys in particular) aren't developed when they are in the womb, so I would think their bodies just can't cope with the influx of alcohol. Maybe when they are born, they are well developed enough for their bodies to cope with a little bit of toxins to filter through their bodies??
So if you had, for example, an alcoholic drink that was say 400ml at 7.0 alcohol your BAL might be 0.05. If your baby then had 400ml of breastmilk with the alcohol content at 0.05 their BAL would be around 0.00035. They are obviosly very rough figures but gives an idea.
A baby would probably get more alcohol from rescue remedy.
Sure no alcohol is best, but i do have a glass now and then.
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