Alcohol and breast milk

[@llli*irishmom]

I plan to go to a wedding this weekend without my LO. I'll have a few drinks but nothing crazy. I plan to pump prior to cocktail hour and save that and then "pump and dump" after the wedding. How long after my first drink should I dump the milk?

[@llli*smittenmom]

Alcohol stays in the milk as long as it stays in you blood, so pumping and dumping will not make it leave your milk faster.

Here is an article from Kellymom you might find helpful http://kellymom.com/bf/can-i-breastf...style/alcohol/

[@llli*mommal]

It's not your first drink that is the issue- it's your last drink, because that will be the last alcohol to leave your system.

Generally, moderate amounts of alcohol are not a problem in breastmilk. Once a moms no longer feeling tipsy, her milk is pretty much safe for baby.

[@llli*5ofus]

A good rule of thumb is the same one you would use when driving. As PP said, your body metabolizes alcohol in your milk the same as your blood... I could never tell if I was still tipsy (and let's face it, no drinking for 9+ months and one glass of wine had me loopy), so if I was going to be gone from LO, say, 4 hours, I would stop drinking about 2 hours before I was back with LO just to be sure. I was very cautious and maybe overly so... I figured I could drink again once LO was older and had drank enough prior to kids that I wasn't going to miss anything LOL

Another thought: I did pump and dump on one occassion, that is when my pumping "time" was during my time away from the baby and I had been drinking. I pumped to keep up supply, but the milk was no good.

[@llli*djs.mom]

Yeah. Don't take the time to dump if you can help it. Just don't feed the baby until you feel OK. Even if your breast are full, if you have metabolized the alcohol, your milk will be fine when you go to feed.

[@llli*kaitlyns.mom]

How old is your baby?

[@llli*lllkaren]

InfantRisk has an article on this --

Alcohol and Breastfeeding

It mentions a method for estimating the amount of time that you should wait before breastfeeding; there's an online calculator for it here:

Estimated Time to Zero Alcohol in Breastmilk (Calculator)

You plug in your body weight and how many drinks you had, it will give you the amount of time it will take to completely eliminate the alcohol from your milk. Basically, it's about 2-2.5 hours per drink.

[@llli*irishmom]

My baby is 11 weeks

[@llli*ambrosegirl84]

My baby doesn't take a bottle, so I have tried to feed him plenty and then have my drink right afterwards, but it seems like when I do that, he still ends up hungry after about an hour. So here's the thing: info from the articles would lead me to believe I should just tee-total for the duration for breastfeeding, since there doesn't seem to be a time when he'd go that long between feedings, except for early morning, and I'm not that hardcore!! But earlier someone said that as long as you feel okay (i.e., not tipsy) you should be fine. So does that mean I can still have my glass of wine, even if he doesn't wait 2 hours to be fed?

[@llli*still.here]

I wouldn't worry about one glass of wine, honestly. It's a personal decision, but I went with the general rule that if I didn't feel drunk I was okay to nurse.