Breastfeeding Diet Preview - Flipbook - Page 7
Alcohol
The basics
Like all nutrients that you consume, alcohol gets into your breastmilk from your blood,
moving freely from your circulatory system to the breastmilk, and out again. The level of
alcohol in your breast milk is approximately the same as the level in your blood. These levels
peak about thirty to sixty minutes after you’ve had your drink, and then they both start to
drop as your body breaks the alcohol down. But if you then have another drink then it will
be 30 to 90 minutes since that drink that the levels will drop and those levels may be higher,
especially if the second drink has a higher alcohol percentage.
Pumping and dumping breastmilk while you drink is said to be helpful if you have a drink so
your baby doesn’t consume alcohol. This doesn’t speed the elimination of alcohol from your
body, but it will help you maintain your milk supply and avoid engorgement as you make
sure baby avoids drinking alcohol with you.
The research
So, let’s look at the research for it is certainly becoming harder to see the wood for the
trees, especially with a well-known breastfeeding specialist and paediatrician,
Jack Newman, posting on Facebook in 2014 that “the amount of alcohol that gets into your