Alcohol Minus Related Pages. Alcohol and Caregivers Caring for an infant while intoxicated is not safe. To receive email updates about this topic, enter your email address. Email Address. What's this? Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity. Related Topics. Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website. If you need to miss a feed, don't let your breasts become uncomfortably full as this can lead to mastitis. It's best to express your breast milk rather than be uncomfortable.
If you've been drinking, never sleep with your baby. There is a strong link between sudden infant death syndrome SIDS and alcohol. If you know that you're going to have a few drinks, arrange for another sober adult to look after your baby. If you drink large amounts of alcohol regularly and you feel you need some help cutting down, there's lots of support available.
These tips on cutting down may be helpful, but if you'd rather talk to someone you can always speak to your midwife, doctor or pharmacist. Get personalised emails for trusted NHS advice, videos and tips on your pregnancy week by week, birth and parenthood. As your blood alcohol drops so will the level of alcohol in your breast milk and pumping and dumping will not speed up this process. Any breast milk that you express during the time that it takes for your blood alcohol to drop will still contain alcohol.
The alcohol will not work its way out of the milk, once outside your body, and any milk pumped while you are affected by alcohol will need to be discarded. The more drinks that you have, the longer it takes for your body to clear the alcohol from your system. Some studies suggest that the amounts of alcohol moving into breast milk are very low compared to the alcohol consumed so that the amount of alcohol that your baby actually gets is minimal and the amount of alcohol ingested by a breastfed infant is only a small fraction of that consumed by its mother.
Other studies say that for every unit of alcohol one unit of alcohol is approximately a single 25ml measure of spirits, half a pint of beer or half a standard ml glass of wine then there is a period that you should wait before feeding your baby.
The time that is suggested to wait before feeding you baby varies on. Mothers who ingest alcohol in moderate amounts can generally return to breastfeeding as soon as they feel neurologically normal. As a general rule, if you are sober enough to drive you should be sober enough to breastfeed. Everybody metabolises alcohol differently and your metabolism of alcohol can vary from day-to-day.
The Australian Breastfeeding Association has a handy App to help you work out how much time you may like to wait. Download the free Feed Safe app for Apple and Android devices. Many breastfeeding mums choose to stop drinking alcohol, however, occasional light drinking while breastfeeding has not been shown to have any adverse effects on babies.
Alcohol is best avoided until your baby is over three months old and then enjoyed as an occasional treat. If you do have an alcoholic drink, make sure you allow at least a couple of hours for the alcohol to go through your system before your next breastfeed. By the time the alcohol is in your system, your baby will have finished feeding.
If, on a single occasion, you have a little more alcohol than you had planned to or if your baby needs to feed sooner than you had anticipated it is OK to breastfeed your baby.
A critical issue to consider is around the care of your baby if you are drinking alcohol. If you are under the influence of alcohol you may make fewer safe decisions around the attention and care of your baby.
It is crucial to plan ahead to arrange that safe sleeping arrangement have been made and never to sleep with your baby if you have been consuming alcohol. Mothers who have been drinking alcohol should never let themselves be in a situation where they might fall asleep with the baby; on a bed, chair or settee this would also apply to other carers who have been drinking alcohol.
The mother can take some alcohol and continue breastfeeding as she normally does. Prohibiting alcohol is another way we make life unnecessarily restrictive for nursing mothers. Thomas W. This does not necessarily mean the dose of alcohol in milk is high, only that the levels in plasma correspond closely with those in milk.
The absolute amount dose of alcohol transferred into milk is generally low and is a function of the maternal level. Older studies, some in animals, suggested that beer or more likely barley may stimulate prolactin levels.
While this may be true, we now know clearly that alcohol is a profound inhibitor of oxytocin release, and inevitably reduces milk letdown and the amount of milk delivered to the infant. Thus beer should not be considered a galactagogue. Reduction of letdown is apparently dose-dependent and requires alcohol consumption of 1. Avoid breastfeeding during and for at least 2 hours after drinking alcohol moderate. Heavy drinkers should wait longer. A good rule is 2 hours for each drink consumed.
Chronic or heavy consumers of alcohol should not breastfeed. When a breastfeeding mother drinks occasionally and limits her consumption to one drink, the amount of alcohol her baby receives has not been proven to be harmful. The absolute amount of alcohol transferred into milk is generally low, and while we constantly review research, existing studies indicate that occasional moderate drinking is not considered harmful for nursing babies. If you want to drink but are concerned about the effect on your baby, expressed breastmilk could be stored to use for the occasion.
Alternatively, you can wait for the alcohol to clear from your system. If your breasts become full while waiting, you can hand express or pump, discarding the milk expressed, but this will not speed up the elimination of alcohol from your body. If consuming alcohol while breastfeeding is something that concerns you, then you may choose to enjoy non-alcoholic drinks instead.
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