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You’re on vacation with your kid and a chilled glass of rosé is calling your name.
Do you A) opt for lemonade to avoid glares from complete strangers while passing judgment or B) order yourself a glass of icy goodness (because god knows motherhood has been hard enough without giving it up) Is).
A lot of breastfeeding parents must have faced the dilemma of whether to drink alcohol sometime and still breastfeed sometime.
There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there – and when words like ‘harmful’ and ‘your baby’ are banded around in the same sentence, it can naturally lead to a lot of anxiety and guilt.
But the reality is much more nuanced than it says: Drinking alcohol and then breastfeeding is bad for your baby. Like everything on this planet, it’s all about moderation.
Comedian Katherine Ryan, 39, won applause from a lot of — but not all — moms recently when she posted a photo of herself enjoying a glass of white wine while nursing her baby.
“Thanks for showing that it’s okay to drink while breastfeeding,” one person commented in response to the photo.
Another added: “Yes! I remember after having my daughter, really struggling with bf (breastfeeding) and the head of lactation support told me ‘you’ll be fine, have some wine and relax at the end of the day if you You can do it. This is a green light for me.
But not everyone believed. Another user commented, “Why would anyone risk their young child’s liver to process alcohol.” “Alcoholism in a child is not “OK” or SMART!! Expressing!!”
So is it okay to drink and breastfeed or not?
Health and breastfeeding experts in the UK – we’re talking the NHS, La Leche League – agree that when a breastfeeding parent drinks occasionally and limits their consumption, the alcohol their baby gets The amount is not harmful. And research supports it.
“The absolute amount of alcohol transferred into milk is generally low, and when we review consistent research, existing studies indicate that occasional moderate drinking is not known to be harmful to infants,” reads Is Guidance from the La Leche League website.
We know that alcohol can pass into breast milk (quite easily) and then into a nursing baby, although a single glass of wine is unlikely to cause any problems.
The mother’s blood alcohol concentration needs to reach 300mg/100ml before the baby becomes mildly sedated, As per NCT. In comparison, 80mg/100ml drink/drive will fail the limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
If you’re concerned, the NHS advises waiting at least two hours before feeding your baby as the alcohol shouldn’t be in your system by then. Alcohol levels are usually highest in breast milk. 30-60 minutes after consuming.
Catherine Fisher, who has been working as a lactation consultant for 35 years, tells HuffPost UK: “It’s perfectly fine for you to drink alcohol when you’re breastfeeding. But if you consume alcohol, you put your baby at risk.”
She says this would mean “you’re drinking all day, every day”.
In the UK it is recognized that regularly drinking more than the recommended limit – ie 14 units per week, FYI – can be harmful to you and your baby. So consuming more than two drinks every day Not recommended.
Besides the obvious health effects for you, drinking above moderate levels has been linked to sleep and developmental problems in children. It can also reduce your milk supply, which means your baby is getting less food, and so can affect growth.
There is also the concern that you will not be able to properly care for your child if you are intoxicated. studies have linked alcohol use to a There is an increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
What can you do if you are ‘going out’?
If you’re going out at night, it can be helpful to express some milk ahead of time so that your baby gets enough nutrition and doesn’t need emergency top-ups in the middle of the night.
Sometimes you go out for ‘one’ drink, only to turn into a wifey three or four. If so, you might want to hold off on breastfeeding for two to three hours for each drink you’ve had. The NHS recommends doing so To give the alcohol time to leave your breast milk.
But even if you have to do a 3am feed in an emergency, it’s worth noting one study suggested Even in a theoretical case of excessive drinking, children would not be exposed to “clinically relevant” amounts of alcohol.
Some people believe you can ‘pump and dump’ – where you express milk contaminated with alcohol to get it out of your system after drinking – however this is a myth.
As long as you have alcohol in your system, any freshly made milk will also contain alcohol. Milk levels will drop as the alcohol level in your body drops.
“With social drinking or going to a party, you don’t need a pump and dump or any of that stuff,” says Fischer.
However, if you haven’t breastfed for a while and your breasts are full, you may find it helpful to pump – because engorgement is never fun.
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