how long do you wait for after drinking alcohol

[hayleylea]

hi i have a function coming up and i am planning on having a few drinks....i have no idea how many bottles i need to express though. I think the norm is for each drink you have your not allowed to breast feed for an hour??? can someone tell me if this is true or if its not what is the right amount of time to wait

[MariaO]

Hi,

I have read that you metabolise alcohol from breastmilk in the same way that you do from the blood stream. You could breastfeed or express before you go out and then either pump and dump when you get in, or just leave it till the morning feed depending on how often you feed and how much you have drunk.

For the (too) few times I have been out/drinking since I had Aoife, i followed the above and fed the baba in the morning after an express when I got in at two in the morning.

The book I read the above in was 'stumbling into motherhood - making babies' by Anne Enright. The chapter was entitled "How to get trolleyed when you are breasfeeding' I have lent the book to a friend otherwise I would quote more precisely from it.

Anyway, I am rambling, one drink an hour seems a safe guide for metabolising.

[cobysmummy]

yes i believe it is one hour for every Standard drink... one beer or wine is a standard drink... but im sure you know that!! so be careful with what you drink because a glass of rum and coke... is not one standard drink... maybe 1.5 or 2...
so just be careful.... but it is 1 hour wait for each standard drink
have a good night!!

[Heids]

My cousin is a midwife and told me 24hrs but I guess it depends on how much you drink :D ( 1 bottle of wine )

She also said if I had 1 standard drink not to worry at all :p

Heids

[Lunar]

Alcohol takes 24 hrs to leave your system. If you were to have a drink and bf your baby will get alcohol too. I know of some mothers who have a few and then bf, but personally I think it's wrong, you are after all feeding your baby alcohol! I would do what one of the other mum's suggested, stock up on milk and then come home and 'pump and dump'. I wouldn't want to take the risk of giving any booze to my baby. And depending on the age of your baby and how many night feeds, you wouldn't want to wait till the morning.... you'd be so full and sore, which then could lead to other problems.
You could look on the Australian breastfeeding associations website for more info, I'm pretty sure they'd have something on there about it.
Kris.

[JnA]

"Alcohol takes 24 hrs to leave your system."


the lactation consultant told me it stays in your breast milk for as long as it stays in you blood stream.. so one standard drink would only last about an hour or so (depending on your metabolism, how much you have eaten and how used you are to drinking etc).

[Miss_Vicki]

If you are 90KG or over 1 Standard drink will take about 1hr to leave the breast milk

So if your about 60KG then id wait about 2'hrs or so (mabie more) before i would BF you lil bubs.
I went to a sites ages ago that actully had a rate guild to where the Safe times To bf After a drink but unsure , If Find it ill post