2011 - Talk Birth

Guest Post: Alcohol and Breastmilk (2011-12-23 15:43)
Just in time for the holiday season, a note to clarify the issue of nursing moms drinking alcohol. [1]
Your milk alcohol level will be exactly the same as your blood alcohol level. So if you’ve had a couple
of drinks and hit the legal limit, your milk has about the same alcohol content as fresh fruit juice or a
non-alcoholic beer–.08 %ish. Alcohol does not concentrate in the milk, and as your liver clears it from your
blood, the milk alcohol level will also drop. There is no need to pump and dump for a healthy baby! If you
are concerned about even very minimal amounts of alcohol in the baby’s system, nurse before you go out,
and time your drinking so that you give your liver time to metabolize it before the baby would want to nurse
again.
The takeaway message: Long before you have enough alcohol in your milk for your baby to even notice,
you would be so hammered that you would hardly remember you even had a baby. The concern for occasional
drinkers is not really alcohol being passed to the baby, but mom and dad remaining sober enough to
care for the baby–and that’s a really big deal where co-sleeping is concerned! Safely sleeping with a baby
means being stone cold sober. Period.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a great New Year to everyone!
Please note that I’m really only talking about moms who have a drink now and then, not habitual heavy
drinkers. We just don’t know what effect continuous long-term exposure to alcohol might have on a baby.
Lynn Carter is an IBCLC in Kirksville, Missouri.
1. http://talkbirth.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/alaina9mo-045.jpg
Jespren (2011-12-23 20:20:52)
Good post, short and sweet, it always annoys me when my friends (or family) respond to me having *a* glass of wine
with ’well someone’s going to sleep well tonight’ (refering to my nurseling). Um...no, one drink won’t even be noticed
by my babe. There was a study this past year released in the U.K. (that mimics studies done in other countries where
healthy social drinking, as opposed to the ’get drunk’ social drinking more common in the U.S., is common) showed
that to even register as affecting an infant (affect, not even dangerously affect) a mom’s blood alcohol level had to be
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