Booze and breastfeeding
Mar 25, 2015 12:38:29 GMT -5
Post by veggiemo on Mar 25, 2015 12:38:29 GMT -5
veggiemo, I by no means think you're a bad mother for drinking. I'm very impressed with the fact that there are mothers who can survive for long periods of time without alcohol! It's hard work!
The test strips are "unreliable" because they have a tendency to show "alcohol" even when miniscule amounts are present, like less than .01%. Which makes mothers afraid to breastfeed even though they are fine to do so. And causes them to "pump and dump" which is a waste of time and resources. I would bet that even after a night of drinking, you probably didn't need to pump and dump. And if you hadn't been relying on those test strips that's a couple ounces you could have saved.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with going beyond tipsy. I only use that as a starting point. I don't recommend anyone getting blackout drunk when they're taking care of a baby, but assuming someone else is responsible for the child during the time period, then that's not even such an issue. So say you go out with the girls while DH is home with the baby. You have 5 or 6 drinks and are definitely feeling it. You take a taxi home (because you're smart and not going to drive drunk). The point is, you don't have to pump and dump your breastmilk. If baby's ready to eat, give him some stored breastmilk and just skip that feeding. Depending on how often your kid eats, you'll probably be sober for the next feeding. The alcohol will metabolize right out of that milk (and there was a study done on rats that showed that lactating rats actually have less alcohol in their blood/breastmilk than their non-lactating counterparts). If skipping that feeding leaves you uncomfortably full, then by all means pump enough to relieve that and dump it, but you don't need to "empty" your breast because the alcohol isn't stored in that milk.
I knew the alcohol metabolizes out of the milk, just as it does your blood. The only time I dumped was if I was engorged in the morning but still testing positive, which happened a few times. Maybe the milk would have been fine and the test strips gave me a false sense of it not being. Like I said, good information to know and something I can use for this next time should I decide to get plastered at my friend's bachelorette party in August