Drinking alcohol reduces the ability of the mother to be aware of her baby’s needs, whether she is breastfeeding or not. If you are under the influence of alcohol you may make fewer safe decisions around the attention and care of your baby. 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.Ī critical issue to consider is around the care of your baby if you are drinking alcohol. Or for total peace of mind, if you’re planning to have an alcoholic drink, you could express and store milk beforehand and give that to your baby for their next feed. By the time the alcohol is in your system, your baby will have finished feeding. Alternatively, you could have a small drink while you’re actually breastfeeding your baby. 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. Alcohol is best avoided until your baby is over three months old and then enjoyed as an occasional treat. 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. One study suggests that the amount of alcohol that a baby will get through breast milk is approximately 5-6% of the weight-adjusted maternal dose and, even in a theoretical case of binge drinking, your baby would not be subjected to clinically relevant amounts of alcohol.
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The Australian Breastfeeding Association has a handy App to help you work out how much time you may like to wait.ĭownload the free Feed Safe app for Apple and Android devices. As a general rule, if you are sober enough to drive you should be sober enough to breastfeed.Įverybody metabolises alcohol differently and your metabolism of alcohol can vary from day-to-day. Mothers who ingest alcohol in moderate amounts can generally return to breastfeeding as soon as they feel neurologically normal.
The time that it takes for your liver to detoxify the alcohol in your system will not be sped up by coffee, cold showers, fresh air or exercise. The time that is suggested to wait before feeding you baby varies on 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 (175ml) glass of wine) then there is a period that you should wait before feeding your baby. 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. The more drinks that you have, the longer it takes for your body to clear the alcohol from your system.
How Long Should I Wait After Drinking Alcohol to Feed My Baby? 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.
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.Īny breast milk that you express during the time that it takes for your blood alcohol to drop will still contain alcohol. There is no benefit in “pumping and dumping” your breastmilk unless you are uncomfortable and need to express to relieve the discomfort. If you don’t have another drink, the concentration gradually falls and a couple of hours after having a single drink the alcohol will have mostly left your breast milk.Īlcohol is not stored in the breast so as your liver metabolises the alcohol causing your blood alcohol level to drop, so does the alcohol level in your breastmilk. Alcohol is one of the most readily absorbed drugs known and alcohol does pass from your bloodstream into your milk.Īlcohol levels reach their highest in breast milk about 30-60 minutes after drinking or after 30-90 minutes if you have had something to eat while you are drinking. Still, we do not know the exact way that alcohol consumption can affect babies’ and what the safe consumption amounts are. Roughly 34-million women of childbearing age drink alcoholic beverages (approximately half of all lactating women in Western countries consume alcohol while breastfeeding), so, it is understandable that it has been the subject of a lot of research.
However, opinions vary over the amount of alcohol that is safe for a breastfeeding mother to drink. Most health care professionals agree that drinking small amounts of alcohol while breastfeeding won’t hurt your baby. But now that you are breastfeeding is it actually safe to enjoy that alcoholic beverage or will the effects of the alcohol be harmful to your baby?
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