The expectant mother should take care of the baby’s health. Doctors recommend a review of their habits and lifestyle a few months before pregnancy. This includes a full, balanced diet, a reasonable distribution of labor and rest. At this stage, the expectant mother should think about the health of her child.
But even after the birth of the baby, this obligation is not removed from her. When a woman is breastfeeding, the baby receives all the necessary nutrients from milk. This means that she still needs to monitor her diet, as well as her lifestyle. Today we will talk about how much you can feed your child after alcohol.
Best to abstain
Indeed, the best option would be to completely eliminate alcohol from your diet. But no one canceled the holidays and solemn events. After a long stay at home, often alone with a child who does not want to unwind, drink a glass of wine and dance. But now you need to think about the consequences of such a relaxation. Better order yourself a coffee or the lightest cocktail. In the end, it’s not alcohol that creates our mood. But if you couldn’t resist, how much can you feed the child after alcohol?
Secure borders
In fact, it is quite difficult to say how much will be safe for the baby. There are numerous studies that have proved impaired fetal development, even with a small amount of alcohol. This is very relevant in the early stages. But the risk of taking alcohol while breastfeeding has not been studied in detail. There is no consensus, which gives rise to many myths that promote complete abstinence or dangerous liberties.
Does alcohol get into milk
When preparing for a holiday, a young mother often asks herself the question of how much to feed her child after alcohol. To answer it, you need to figure out how great its ability to penetrate into milk. In fact, this has long been studied. Ethanol begins to pass into milk almost immediately. Its level in plasma and milk is the same. Therefore, it is undesirable not only regular drinking, but even one-time libations.
What you need to know
As already mentioned, ethanol has no barriers and freely penetrates into milk. Concentration reaches its maximum level in an hour. If a woman has eaten tightly, then this time can stretch for 90 minutes. The rate of excretion depends on the mass of the person and the strength of the drink, that is, the amount of ethanol received.
How much you can feed your child after alcohol can be calculated based on the following example. If a woman weighs 55 kg, then it takes 2 hours to remove alcohol in the amount of one serving. But strong alcohol circulates in the blood much longer. So, only 45 ml of vodka will be completely removed after 13 hours. While alcohol is contained in the blood, a similar level will be in milk.
This suggests that the use of strong drinks while feeding a child is strictly prohibited. In extreme cases, you need to dilute them with juice or mineral water and consume in minimal quantities. Or drink some beer. After how much you can feed your child after alcohol in this case, you can already count. After drinking a glass of beer, you can feed the baby in two hours without fear.
Withdrawal Period
An experiment is described in the literature. Several nursing mothers have consumed a small amount of vodka with orange juice (the equivalent of a can of beer). The average milk concentration was 320 mg / L after 30 minutes. At the same time, the amount of milk produced decreased by almost a quarter.
It must be said that ethanol is excreted rather quickly, especially if consumed in reasonable amounts. It also depends on the weight of the woman. Moreover, the larger it is, the faster the elimination occurs. The body is easiest to handle with a bottle of beer. How much can I feed a child after alcohol in such quantity? If you left your baby with your grandmother for three hours, then at the end of this period you can safely give him breasts. Milk no longer presents any danger to him.
The effects of alcohol on a child
This is a key question. It is for this that we find out how much it is impossible to feed a baby with breast milk after alcohol, because we want to know the degree of danger to it. It can be considered relatively safe if the mother drinks alcohol occasionally, not exceeding one serving per day. If these norms are violated, or this happens regularly, then such a bad habit can cause the following changes in the behavior of the child:
- With a single dose, lethargy occurs.
- There may be a developmental delay.
It is very important to remember that there is no known safe dose. Any amount of alcohol may not affect the condition of mom and baby in the best way. Therefore, it is much better to take a walk in the fresh air, go shopping or swim in the pool. This allows you to relax without the use of strong drinks.
Alcohol intoxication
The younger the child and the weaker his health, the greater the chance of his poisoning with ethanol, which is excreted in milk. There are real cases of death of children from alcohol intoxication. In one of them, the baby was born prematurely and had health problems. When he was one month old, my mother drank three glasses of beer and after breastfeeding. In the morning, the baby died. In another case, a three-week-old baby was healthy. The woman drank two liters of beer during the day, after which she fed the baby and put her to bed. The outcome was also the death of the baby. As you can see, the matter is not only in the strength of the drink, but also in quantity. A similar effect can be achieved if you drink a bottle of champagne. After how much you can feed your child after alcohol, you need to think for sure. A mistake can be too expensive.
Reasonable restrictions, the opinion of doctors
Most doctors who specialize in HBV say they do not require their patients to completely refuse. They have two reasons for this. First, subject to the above conditions, a very small amount of alcohol enters the milk. It cannot harm a baby. The second point is social in nature. A complete ban on drinking often leads to the fact that the mother refuses to breast-feed very quickly. In this case, you can continue to lead a familiar lifestyle, the metabolism of mother and baby are forever disconnected. But such an outcome is undesirable, because breast milk is very important for the baby.
By the way, modern studies show that beer slightly increases the level of prolactin in the mother’s body. This leads to an increase in the amount of milk produced. But such an effect is provided by the beer itself, and not the ethanol contained in it at all. Moreover, if you calculate how much you can feed the child after 1 liter of alcoholic beer, it turns out that you have to wait about 6-7 hours. Therefore, it is better to replace it with a non-alcoholic analogue.
Need to know
- First of all, evaluate the age of the baby. The liver of the newborn is still very small. If the natural filter of an adult can pump a certain amount of alcohol with virtually no harm to itself, then intoxication in a child can develop from a small dose. From about 3 months old, the baby’s liver already copes with ethanol much better.
- Up to 3 months, you must completely abandon any alcohol. How much can I feed my baby after a bottle of wine? If this happened during an evening feast, then at night feed the baby from the bottle. Giving him a chest is recommended not earlier than after 12 hours. And it’s better to abstain for a day.
- The role and weight of a woman plays. A person with a large weight can neutralize ethanol much faster. If you are distinguished by a fragile physique, then you need to withstand a longer break between drinking alcohol and feeding the baby.
- The effect of alcohol depends on its amount. The more drunk, the greater the break required before feeding.
Better yet, discard even a small amount of strong drinks. This will do a good job.
Mother's intoxication
If you drank alcohol, but do not feel the effects of it on yourself, then only a short break is required between the next feeding. In this case, the concentration of alcohol in milk is not harmful to the baby. But if the mother feels drunk, then you need to maintain the interval for complete sobering. Moreover, there are no drugs that will accelerate this process.
The liver must process alcohol and turn it into acetic formaldehyde. Now this harmful compound will circulate in the blood until it is excreted. Neither sorbents nor other drugs can help. But there is another point. A drunk mother, like another person, cannot give the baby proper attention. She can crush a child, drop it or leave it unattended. Therefore, you need to be careful and not even drink wine. After how much you can feed your child after alcohol, you can say only by weighing all the parameters.
Risk assessment
Most mothers find themselves in a situation where they want to drink a little and relax. But you need to assess the risks associated with the ingestion of alcohol in milk. To do this, you can prepare for the "libation" in advance. You can pre-decant and prepare the necessary amount of milk so that you can safely skip a few feedings until the body displays all that has been drunk.
Another option is to plan your alcohol intake in such a way that it falls on time after evening feeding. When the baby is fast asleep and guaranteed to sleep for 2-3 hours. You can slightly express milk if the chest is too full.
Nicotine and Feeding
There is another important question, through how much you can feed the child after alcohol and tobacco. Nicotine, which enters the body of the mother, does not bypass the baby. Therefore, it is best to give up this habit. Nicotine, like alcohol, penetrates into milk in about 30 minutes. The concentration of nicotine in milk is the same as in blood. And in 2-3 hours there is a removal of nicotine from the body. Therefore, the feeding scheme will have to be built in accordance with the smoking schedule.
If you evaluate the harm from nicotine in breast milk and a complete rejection of feeding, it is difficult to say what is a more serious test for the baby. But studies have shown that this habit leads to a deterioration in the quality of breast milk, the destruction of a large number of vitamins, not counting the poisoning of the baby's body with toxic substances.