?s about drinking and bfding

mcgeeva

Hey Ladies,

Yes I do enjoy some wine now and then, but I keep getting conflicting information and would like some input. I was told by a LC to wait 6 hours after my last drink to BF next and pump and dump until then. She said when he is older you can wait 3 hours from the last drink to BF. When I looked online I saw that pumping and dumping was ineffective since the alcohol spike in the milk 90 minutes after the last drink then will pretty much decrease to nothing. I ever bought the alcohol breast test strips from target to test my milk and my pediatrician said that was going overboard.  Obviously I want what is best for my son and seeing online people shouldn't have more then 1 drink a week or it can cause SIDS etc worries me.

 Any input would be appreciated!!! 

mnewlee

Hmm,. I've never heard 6 hours before. I've always read 2.5-3 hours after your last drink.

A rule of thumb I use is once I can't feel the buzz of the alchohol it's okay to nurse. Once your blood alchohol goes back to normal, your milk is back to normal too. That's why pumping and dumping (unless it's for your own physical comfort) isn't necessary.

Plus, very little of the alchohol actually gets into your milk.

 

ArcadianDreams

My understanding was that alcohol is removed from the milk at the same rate as the rest of your body. So technically, an hour later it should be gone. I think the 2-3hr rule is more precautionary.

As the pp said another good RoT I have heard is "If you're sober enough to drive you're sober enough to BF"

kerischrader

ArcadianDreams:

My understanding was that alcohol is removed from the milk at the same rate as the rest of your body. So technically, an hour later it should be gone. I think the 2-3hr rule is more precautionary.

As the pp said another good RoT I have heard is "If you're sober enough to drive you're sober enough to BF"

 This... enjoy!

mcgeeva

Wow I could be saving a lot of pumped milk then!! Do you guys think drinking more then once a week can harm my little man? It's getting warm out and weekends we love to go to vineyards etc

Thank you for the help!!!

tokenhoser

It's one of those things where I think the warnings come from the consequences of more heavy drinking. I have one drink in the evening fairly often - more than once a week, definitely. I rarely have more than one drink. I usually have it right after putting my baby to bed so that there will be a nice stretch where he doesn't want to eat (if your baby isn't doing that yet, he probably will within a month or two).

Your milk alcohol is = to your blood alcohol. So if I have one glass of wine that is 12% alcohol, my blood alcohol might spike at 0.05%. Non-alcoholic beer is 0.5% alcohol, or 10 x worse than my milk at that point.

I try to minimize my baby's exposure to  alcohol, but sometimes a glass of wine or a beer is a great pleasure at the end of a long day.

mnewlee

I really don't think drinking a couple of times a week is going to do any harm.

Granted, if every night you have a couple of glasses of wine and then feed your baby while you still feel the buzz then, yeah, that could do some harm over time.

But if you're being smart and following the guidelines I wouldn't think twice about it.

mcgeeva

Yeah I definitely don't do heavy drinking. When I do drink I will feed my son, then have a drink or two and if it's before his bed time I will give him a bottle of earlier pumped milk. wait till he wakes up 5 or 6 hours later and bf him. But I was pumping and dumping even with one glass then doing an extra feeding with a bottle in the middle of the night because I would read online and get freaked out.