Ep. 166- Do I need to Pump and Dump?

Transcript:

*We apologize for any typos, misspellings or incorrect grammar. Our transcript is auto-generated by software that’s trying its best, just like all of us.*

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Milk Minute podcast. Welcome. I hope you’re having a great summer thus far. Yeah, I’m so excited. I have two reasons to celebrate this week. One is that it’s Pride Month. It’s really wonderful. There’s the local like pride celebration in my town this weekend.

It’s gonna be super fun and it’s our three year anniversary guys. Can you believe it? We actually did three years of podcasting. This is insane. Actually, I kind of, I kinda can’t believe it. I can’t believe it either, because when we first started we were doing biweekly releases and then we were like, that’s a lot.

So we switched to just, we were crazy. We switched to doing just once a week. But still really to do anything once a week for three years in a row is impressive. I mean, that’s, I’m proud of us. And we’ve like really rarely taken breaks, and then only for like one or two weeks at a time. I know we actually have only run one rerun in three years.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s insane. Insane. And we have over 160 episodes at this point. I think this is like 166 or something. And that’s not counting like the bonus episodes that we throw in sometimes for, cuz we’re like sadus, I guess. We just love to make more work for ourselves, I think. Yeah. Oh man, it’s, it’s so weird because when you mark time weekly, it goes fast, weird.

It’s weird, like really fast. Like I just remember like it was yesterday doing our hundredth episode photo shoot with the cake and was, oh my gosh, that was fun. A year over a year ago. What the heck that, yeah. Wow. Insane. Well, you know, we did finally decide because we’ve been working so hard that we do deserve a little itty bitty break.

And so we thought we might like throw in a rerun. Don’t be mad. Well, here’s, here’s the thing. You need to hear this episode again anyway because we still get asked the same question over and over. Do I need to pump and dump? And so we are going to rerun our alcohol episode because if you’re on a pontoon boat right now, breastfeeding, wondering if you can have a white claw.

Yeah, I wanna know that you can, it’s okay. I mean, maybe, maybe you’re marching in a pride parade. You like wanna go celebrate after maybe you’re sitting down with your best friends and you’re like, we’re gonna celebrate the milk minutes third anniversary with some wine. Yeah, we’re here for it. Drink responsibly.

Know the rules about, you know, pump and dump or whatever. We’re gonna rerun this. We think it’s an excellent episode. It’s one of my favorites still. And I don’t, I don’t know, like I’m just. I think it’s kinda, it’s nice because the information hasn’t changed. Yeah. I don’t have to be like update on the science.

No, it’s the same. It’s the same. And also if you are not an a alcohol drinker, I am currently pregnant, in case you did not know that. And I have really been enjoying the athletic brewing company beers that are non-alcoholic and they’re actually really good. So I enjoy the craft beer taste a lot. Unless it’s like fruity, I’m not, no, it is good.

I, when I came over last, we tried some and I was like, oh, this actually tastes like a beer. Yeah, it’s interesting and I still wanna try the non-alcoholic wine. I’m kind of a bit of a wine snob, so I’m afraid to like spend money on it and hate it. But yeah, so if you’re not drinking currently and you would like to explore some of those other options, please know that it’s much better than it was four years ago.

Yeah, I can attest to that. It’s really cool. I. I’m interested in hearing about the wine because in my experience, the sparkling non-alcoholic wines were okay. The flat ones were just like syrup. Ew. So I would love to find if there’s like a dry, like white non-alcoholic wine, cuz that’s my favorite kind. Oh, you like a chardonnay?

Yeah, and I like a pinot. Well I do have a funny story that I wanted to put in the front end of this episode because you deserve to laugh. Yes, I, this is, this is one of my favorite things we’ve heard recently. Okay. So this is from Carrie H and Carrie says, I was listening to an old episode recently, I think it was Hacking Your Let Down Where they discuss listening to the same thing every time you nurse or pump to like signal your breasts to have a letdown.

So I work at a flute specialty store as a repair tech, and more often than not, I’m listening. To flutes while pumping. I’m at a training session now and they played a video with flute in the background and right on cue. I had a letdown, had to run to the bathroom as soon as I could to check I wasn’t covered in milk.

Oh my God. She’s flute activated. I cannot, it’s honestly like, Such a joyful story. It’s, it’s great. We love to hear it. I’m so glad that you like, you know your trigger now. Oh my gosh. That story gets me. So I hope you had a nice little giggle and I hope you enjoy our break as much as we will. I will be in Savannah at a bachelorette party, pregnant.

Mm-hmm. Drinking my athletic brewing company beers. And yeah. Yeah. So let us know how that goes for you. Absolutely. And you know, before we hop into the rerun, I, there is like an old award at the end of the episode. I just wanna plug a fresh award in. Okay. Yeah. Plug it in. Yeah. Because you know, let’s keep it fresh.

So let’s like take the opportunity to celebrate someone else, right? Mm-hmm. Today I wanna give an award to Tiffany Goetz. She is our virtual assistant. She does so much of the like tedious computer work, like scheduling episodes and getting summaries put up in all the right places. And just like she does the little things that need to happen so that these actually make it from like our computer over to the internet. 

Yeah. Regularly. On time. Yes, on time. Every time. And Tiffany just hit a year of breastfeeding with her sweet little boy. And we are so, so proud of her. Yeah. This girl has three kids, works for us and our crazy schedule. Breastfed for a year, couldn’t love her more. She always has a great attitude.

She is the first person to text us and be like, Hey, you guys didn’t do this, but don’t worry, I did it for you. Just give me a thumbs up if that’s okay. It’s always okay. Yes. Thank you, Tiffany. Yeah, she’s amazing. She’s a proactive go getter, and we would basically just fall apart without her. Yeah. What award should we give her?

Tiffany. Sweet, sweet, sweet. Tiffany, we love you so much. We are giving you the Coming In Clutch Award because you are incredible. You’re an amazing partner to this podcast. And. You just worked so hard to get to a year of breastfeeding. We are so proud of you. Yes, we are. Even though you have had to sit through hours and hours and hours of us talking about breastfeeding, you still made it to a year.

Congrats. We love you so much and we hope you all enjoy this episode and we’ll see you back in a couple weeks. Bye bye. 

Alcohol, we’re talking about the booze. Welcome back to the Milk Minute Podcast everybody. Today we are gonna be talking about alcohol. Finally, long awaited. Everybody’s been wanting to know, they’ve been waiting with bated breath and wine in hand for Heather and Maureen to tell them it’s okay.

But before we get into that first, go pour yourself that glass of wine. Then we’re gonna answer a listener question. And if you stick around till the end, we have an award in the alcove. We sure do. And it’s a really good one. And it might just be you.

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Okay. So our question today is from Jacqueline Kay and she asks, are you a candidate to donate milk to a milk bank? She’s talking about, I. If you occasionally drink alcohol, for example, half a serving of wine once a week. So the answer to this is it depends what milk bank you donate to in general, like very small amounts of alcohol every once in a while are totally fine.

But what I would encourage you to do is go to the website of the Milk Bank that you would be donating to because they have a frequently asked questions page where they answer stuff like that. Yep. That’s what I would do. Cuz they all have their different recommendations and you just wanna make sure that if you had your heart set on donating that it doesn’t get squashed because you also wanted to enjoy yourself.

Mm-hmm. And have a glass of wine. Both are okay by the way. Right. But since they pool milk, even if you had drank alcohol and there were a couple of bags that had some alcohol in it, they combined milk from several donors at once and then separated out again into serving. So it becomes very, very dilute.

Yep. Okay, let’s move on to the episode. Let’s do it. We’re drinking, patrolling, trying to catch me drinking and breastfeeding. Wanna catch me drinking breastfeeding. Oh dear. Okay. Well today we’re talking about alcohol. And breast milk. Yes. How did these two things become so intertwined? Oh my God. So controversial.

Let me just say, this is like one of the main mom shame topics I hear all the time where people are like, oh my God, you drank and you breastfed. You didn’t pump and dump. I’m just gonna start the episode out. By saying this is a shame free zone. Yes. Okay. Shame free even if you have an alcohol addiction.

Yep. Shame free. Mm-hmm. So please continue listening. Okay. So I’m gonna start out, we’re gonna start out with some fairly conservative. Recommendations and then we’re gonna like pick apart what’s really going on. How does that sound? I like to pick things apart. Yeah, me too. So I’m gonna start out with the CDCs recommendations for drinking alcohol while breastfeeding, because honestly they’re usually super conservative and like very much play it on the safe side.

So I kind of like to start there and then diverge. Take me there. Okay. They say, That not drinking alcohol is going to be the safest option for breastfeeding parents. However, moderate alcohol consumption by a breastfeeding mother, which is up to one drink per day is not known to be harmful to the infant.

And then they go on to say it’s even safer if you wait two hours after your drink to nurse. Okay, so. You. So I’m just gonna say this organization is usually super conservative and even they say you can have a drink and nurse. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Nowhere in there. Does it say pump and dump? Yes. And it then it goes on to say that drinking alcoholic beverages is not an indication to stop breastfeeding, even if you drink more than what they recommend.

There you go. Mm-hmm. Breastfeeding has a lot of protective qualities for other things that can be happening to your baby. And it sounds like some really smart people weighed the costs and benefits and they said, Hmm, we better not discourage anybody from breastfeeding, especially the majority of humans that like to have an occasional glass of wine.

Right. So let’s like, let’s, you know, dig into it. So obviously because it’s recommended that you don’t drink a lot while you’re breastfeeding. I. We’re gonna assume from there. And we know now from studies that alcohol does pass into breast milk, but it doesn’t just stay there. So the old recommendation was to pump and dump.

You drank. Oh, pump and dump, and then you can feed your baby. You’re good. This makes no fucking sense because we’ve learned that alcohol moves freely in and out of our milk. So, If you have milk sitting in your breasts and you wait, it actually is going to be less alcoholic later. Versus if you pump and dump the milk you make right then is still gonna have the same amount of alcohol.

You’re basically just wasting your milk. Right? So that sucks. And we basically, at this point in time, Like never recommend pumping and dumping for anything unless it is truly, really super dangerous to feed your baby like that. And also, alcohol is water soluble much like caffeine is. And when things are water soluble and your breast milk is made from blood, that water soluble stuff is gonna go back and forth between the blood.

And the milk. So as your alcohol, blood, alcohol level rises, the alcohol level in your milk will rise as the blood alcohol level in your blood goes down, the alcohol in your breast milk will go down. Now some people are probably thinking, okay, but I took a medication one time and my doctor told me that I had to pump and dump.

Maybe, maybe because that medication was fat soluble and it does not move in and out freely between the blood and the milk. It might just stay in the fat cells in the milk. So at that point in time, you would have to remove the milk. To remove the substance. Yeah. So very different things and what we’ve learned from a lot of studies at this point, right, because a lot of people use alcohol.

So you know, we have to have this data. And of course I’m using my buddy LactMed to help us out here, like I do like every episode. When are they gonna call you and give you a t-shirt or something? Just saying, anyway, we know from these studies that breast milk, alcohol levels, Are super, super similar to blood alcohol levels, right?

And most people, because you know, they drive, they know that you can’t have a blood alcohol level above a certain point. You know, we all know this 0.0 8.09 level that we can’t exceed. So what that means then, if, say you are at the point where you are. Reaching beyond the legal driving limit with your blood alcohol level, and you’re at a 0.09, that’s actually then 0.09% alcohol in your blood.

And if you write that down, you know, and you’re looking at your 10th places, that’s less than a 10th of a percent, right? So in your blood, that sucks. That makes you feel really drunk. It impairs your vision and your judgment. But. In something that you’re consuming that is a very, very small amount of alcohol.

And most of our juices, kombucha, things like that, they all have probably more alcohol than that in them. Mm-hmm. Not that we’re going around giving babies baby kombucha, but if we did, they wouldn’t. No. But they would not. Get so drunk that they died. I mean, a lot of people give their eight month old juice though, right?

Mm-hmm. And juice can have up to a percent of alcohol in it. Yeah. So I just like to really break that down for people for some context here when we talk about this, because when we’re talking about your milk being alcoholic, you are really never going to reach the point where you even have a full percent of alcohol in your milk or you would be dead.

Even if you’re reaching half a percent of alcohol in your milk, you’re probably in a coma and not worried about lactating or maybe dead. Mm-hmm. So these are really, really super itty bitty tiny amounts. Now, you know also for context, right? Babies are much smaller than us. They metabolize alcohol much slower, especially like a premature baby.

So we wanna be more careful with our premature babies, our medically unwell babies, and our new newborns. And the older baby is, and the healthier baby is, you can be a little bit more lenient. Mm-hmm. And when they’re writing these recommendations, they’re not, They’re not specifically breaking those groups apart.

So if they’re just gonna make one blanket statement that, you know, we do or do not recommend it, they’re not gonna be like, well, if your baby meets this and this criteria, then you’re probably okay. So we just wanted to mention that. And the same thing goes for medication. Anytime anyone has a premature or medically unwell baby, I treat them differently than I would if they have a chunky nine month old.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like chunky nine month olds are very resilient. Right? And because these guidelines are so generalized, like that’s why we do this episode, right? That’s why we’re breaking it down because those guidelines say one thing, but they mean a whole lot more than that one paragraph that I read off the CDC website.

So let’s break it down even further then. If you’re one of those people who wants to be very, very careful about how much alcohol is in your breast milk and you say, feel uncomfortable about any alcohol in there, totally fine. The safest time for you to drink is actually gonna be while you’re nursing your baby, because while you’re nursing your baby, the milk they’re drinking does not have alcohol in it yet.

Even if you have a drink in your hand, it’s gonna take. A little bit of time for any alcohol to reach your milk, and it takes about 30 to 60 minutes after your drink for your milk alcohol levels to peak at their highest. Yep. So definitely I would say recommending drinking while breastfeeding. Yeah. Or like right before or right after.

You know, sometime in that, in that really close time range. And then per drink, we’re gonna have about two hours. To metabolize most of that alcohol out of our blood and milk, you know, and, and I think a lot of people really want those numbers and they really wanna be super safe. So there you go.

There’s the tool to do that, and at that point in time, say you have four drinks and you don’t have eight hours, you might have to pump and dump. If you want zero alcohol in your breast milk, you might have to pump and save it for a milk bath or something or dump it if you’ve got tons and you’re not worried about it because we don’t want you not.

Removing the milk because there’s alcohol in there. We don’t wanna create a supply issue or a mastitis issue or anything like that. So just be cognizant of how long it’s going to take for you to get that alcohol out of your milk. Yeah, and I just wanna say again it takes a lot of alcohol to get to a dangerous level for your infant.

So typically when we’re looking at that, your ability to care for your infant is gonna be impaired before your milk is too alcoholic for them to drink. Right? And granted, that’s not true for every single person. We all have a different tolerance. But really, you know, if you’re feeling tipsy and you feel like you’re stumbling, mumbling, bumbling, I.

Yeah, probably don’t pick up your baby or feed your baby at that point. Right. More importantly, because you might pick up your baby and fall and hurt them. Not necessarily because your milk has too much alcohol in it. Yeah. I think people are much more likely to have some kind of weird accident because they’re just not paying attention.

You know? Especially if you like to drink and then I. Be on your phone and be on TikTok. I would say that the, the increase in accidents in little children has gone up since we’ve had our technology in hand, and that’s probably just as dangerous as having a drink in your hand. You know, it both are distracting.

So just keeping in mind, you know, if you are gonna be having a couple drinks, it’s okay, but be cognizant of the things going on around you and make sure that there’s another person there maybe to, to help you watch the child. Yeah. But you know, let’s talk about some of the studies and data about the risks so you guys can do a real risk analysis for yourself.

What we have seen from research is that daily heavy use of alcohol, which would be considered more than two drinks a day, appears more than anything to decrease the length of time that mothers breastfeed their babies. We don’t totally know what the long-term effect effects of daily use of alcohol on the breastfed infant are.

We have some evidence that says that it impairs infant growth and motor function. I. But other studies have contradicted that. Yeah, and it also could be a confounding variable with how much moms are paying attention to those kids. I mean, if they’re truly heavy drinkers and they’re drunk most of the day, I would say the majority of the developmental delays, or probably because they’re not picking baby up, they’re not spending as much time talking to baby, face to face.

You know, really having that one-on-one time that they’re focused on the child. Right, because we have alcohol affecting maternal behavior as well as milk content. It is a really hard thing to study. Yeah. You can’t just pin it on the milk. It’s never just one thing. Right. We are such a dynamic organisms that have so many different things in play that it’s really hard to just point to one thing and say, you did this and this happened.

Mm-hmm. You know, but we do know that really heavy use by the lactating parent could cause excessive sedation in the infant, right? Just like it does in adults. Fluid retention or even hormone imbalances. So let’s talk more about babies drinking alcohol in a computer simulation of breastfed infant serum alcohol levels.

So that would be how much alcohol is in your milk after. The lactating parent ingested 250 milliliters of wine. So 250 milliliters of wine is about eight ounces. So that is more than one glass of wine. Right? It’s like one and a half. Yeah. And that’s based on a five ounce. Wine poor. Okay, so using just math equations to figure out in general what the infant blood alcohol level would be.

They kind of posited concentrations of 0.0033% in newborns and 0.0038% in three month old infants. So this is a very, very super teeny, tiny amount of alcohol. You would not feel drunk at all if this was your blood alcohol content, right? That would, that’s like not even an no duels, right? Whereas, you know, if I drink a glass and half of wine, frankly, after not drinking an entire pregnancy, I’m feeling a little tipsy.

But that does not mean my baby is right. So, just to be clear, a lot of people like to say, oh, if you feel drunk, your baby’s gonna feel drunk. That none of that is real. What people will say is, if you’re feeling it, Then you should think about the safety of your baby. Right? You know? And that’s it. Not that you’re gonna get your baby drunk.

And that’s the concern. The concern is, can you care for this child? Right? It’s just your motor functioning is gonna be impaired. I. Another estimate said that if a person ingested four standard drinks at once, so you down four beers, which would have me on the floor right now and then breastfed the infant.

So here I am, I chug four beers. I’m breastfeeding lira. The infant would attain a blood alcohol level concentration of 0.049. Oh no wait, 0.0049%, even smaller again. So I’m super drunk. I definitely can’t drive. My infant would still be safe to drink my milk. I probably just wouldn’t be safe to hold her.

Maybe my husband would have to hold the pump up for me or something. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I, I hope that those BAC estimates for infants are reassuring to you in some way. And that kind of helps you think like, okay, if I have a glass of wine, I’m not poisoning my child. Yeah. And I think also the study that you referenced that says that mothers that drink more alcohol, breastfeed less.

It could be that, you know, after four beers you’re just like, screw it. I’m not pumping. Like I’m not feeding right. I’m not pumping. And you do that enough times and eventually you have a supply issue. And then it’s like, you know what? I’m done. Well, and what we also see is that alcohol inhibits your letdown reflex.

That’s true. Now that is a hundred percent true. So it’s just like stress in that if you’re exposed to it kind of chronically, that is going to lower your milk supply. Mm-hmm. Yep. High alcohol levels in the bloodstream definitely inhibit that oxytocin surge. Should I compare this to Sex Drunk Sex or not?

No. I mean, yeah, we haven’t gone there in a while. Sure. Do it. I mean, like, let’s, let’s do some cringing, let’s, let’s say for example, that somebody I. Thought it would be a good idea to have drunk sex. Never have we done that. That not us. I’m just saying hypothetically, it’s probably not gonna be the best sex you had, and it’s certainly not gonna be the best orgasm you ever had, because that same oxytocin surge that is in charge of the orgasms is muted.

It’s just not gonna be as powerful as it would if you had all of your neurons firing on the same level and all of those hormones working in concert with each other. So yeah, when you have a bunch of beers, it’s gonna make sure that your brain does not have that oxytocin surge that’s gonna help squeeze the muscles in your breast to get that milk ejected.

So, mm-hmm. You do that enough times and you could have a supply issue as well. Well, and I’m not talking one and a half glasses of wine. Yeah. I’m talking like, if you are consistently having four drinks in a one hour period at night, I mm-hmm. Mean, yeah. I, after one glass of wine, you could have the best sex of your life after four glasses of wine.

Not so much. Get a little sloppy. Yeah. But you know, at this point I hope that you, you understand from us that. Occasional moderate use is fine and even a once in a while, if you want to drink a lot, that’s okay, but you probably shouldn’t care for your infant then. You know, we hear a lot of people like, oh, I’m going to a bachelorette party, what should I do?

And if you’re gonna be away from your infant and you’re not caring for them and not feeding them, definitely pump. Some people then take the milk from that pump and kind of put it in. With a bunch of other milk and dilute it and mix it up and feed it to baby or yeah, they just save it for a milk bath or you know, something else where their baby’s not drinking it, and that’s fine.

So, But Heather, I do wanna move on to like the bad shit now. Yeah. That can happen with like, a lot of alcohol use. Well, before we get into like the really bad stuff, can we just touch on a couple symptomatic things that might happen? Okay. So you mentioned maybe some sleepiness and maybe, maybe some fluid retention.

Oh, fluid retention. I mean, we can even see like with really, really heavy use things like seizures or thrombocytopenia or things like that. But with every day, like two a day maybe. It might change the taste of your breast milk because, I mean, lots of things change the taste of your breast milk. That’s how your baby learns about their environment in different flavors and in your culture that you’re exposing them to.

So if you have fireball whiskey in your coffee one morning, just. For fun on vacation, your baby might look at you like, what the heck is that? When they nurse, because they’re tasting something just a little bit different. Now if they’re used to having that, they’re probably not gonna care. Mm-hmm. But if it’s like a brand new thing that you’re trying, you might see that your infant is like, Hmm, I don’t know if I like that flavor yet.

But they do that with lots of things like broccoli, if you haven’t had broccoli and they’re trying that through your breast milk for the first time. So you don’t need to immediately start putting a bunch of shame on yourself if your baby is like, Questioning your milk flavor because you had some alcohol.

That’s just something to note. So we’ve had a lot of questions from people about tummy upset in babies, but we did not see anything in the research that showed that alcohol through breast milk causes tummy upset in babies. Right? Especially moderate use like we’re talking about. You know, if you have a glass or two every once in a while, really the most common symptom is gonna be that your baby’s a little sleepy.

Yeah, but I think that people that are hyper aware of their alcohol that they’re drinking are gonna be looking for things like that. So, you know, if you’re already feeling guilty, and if you are at the point where you can’t even enjoy a glass of wine, it might not be worth it for you. So I think that that’s probably what’s going on there, where people are like, I don’t know.

Should I, shouldn’t I? And then they have a glass of wine and then their baby randomly has gas and then they immediately are like, why did I do that? I knew this would cause this problem. And we did not, we did not see anything in the research that pointed to that. Nope. Okay. So before we get into really heavy alcohol use and effects in the infant and parent, I do wanna say that if you are suffering from an alcohol addiction, there is a lot of help out there.

And I was actually just trying to look for like a hotline that I could tell you guys. There are like a hundred hotlines for this because it’s a very common addiction. Addiction is a disease. It is not a choice. I just wanna make that clear. We are not shaming anybody. We understand that this is a really big struggle.

And we just wanna make sure that you feel okay reaching out for help. Yeah, and I think, and let you reach out the stresses of pregnancy and child rearing can really bring out an addiction that was previously taken care of, you know, like got under control. And now because of environmental circumstances, we’re back to struggling with it.

So no shame in that. I think a lot of people are afraid to reach out for help, obviously, for fear that the system is gonna. A take their baby. Mm-hmm. That’s a big deal. And then at the very minimal amount, just shame the hell out of them and have it in their chart. My friend used to be a cocaine addict, like a really good friend of mine.

Right. And she mentioned it to a doctor one time after she had been clean for like five years. And now every single time she gets a new doctor, they’re like, I see that you do cocaine. And she’s like, I do not get cocaine. It’s been 10 years. Right. Right. So there’s definitely a lot of stigma attached to it, and we recognize that stigma and shame don’t help a healing process.

They don’t fucking help you quit. They don’t help you heal. They don’t help you change. And also that, you know, the stress of sleeplessness and postpartum mood disorders all can contribute to this. While we’re lactating. So I’m just gonna shout out one hotline here and I hope it’s a good one, cuz really I’m not totally sure.

There are so many and I’ve never called one. But the Recovery Centers of America have a, an addiction treatment hotline. 8 7 7 6 0 9 1 8 2 7. If you need something right now and, and if you’re not sure if you have an alcohol problem or not that’s okay too. Like you can still call. Mm-hmm. And it, it can still be anonymous.

You know, there’s a lot of times that my life that I have felt like I wasn’t. Coping well with a situation, and I was drinking more than I normally would have, and that concerned me. And it’s not that I was an alcoholic, it was that I clearly was dealing with some things in my life that I was running away from.

So if you start to feel like you’re using alcohol as an escape, then also no judgment. And when you’re ready, and if you’re ready, grab a therapist and start working through some of the stresses of your everyday life and get some coping skills that are a little bit healthier. Just all around. Okay, so let’s talk about extremely heavy alcohol use and breastfeeding.

Okay, so again, I’m gonna pull from the LactMed website where we have some case studies which might shed some light on this. So we have one case study of a parent who was drinking, as it says here, large amounts of wine, champagne, beer, and liquors. So I don’t exactly know what that means, but we’re gonna assume it’s a lot based on the rest of this article.

Several more than four or five drinks every day might be this heavy use. So what we actually saw with this infant was that they were gaining too much weight every day, and that’s where that fluid retention comes in. Mm-hmm. And then the infant was restless, sleepless and began to have seizures that required medical treatment.

So, And then basically as soon as he was taken off that milk and was nursed by a wet nurse, he began to recover within three days. I wonder how much of that though was also the fact that he might have been exposed to it in pregnancy? Yeah, we don’t know. There’s a lot of questions at these, but this will kind of just give you a range of.

Kind of possible scary stuff that can happen. I think we can’t really do an episode about this without acknowledging that. Mm-hmm. Right. You know, we have another case study of, again, really heavy use where baby had pseudo Cushing syndrome, which ended up in a bloated appearance, excessive weight gain, diminished length for age, but this mother was drinking more than 50 cans of beer a week, plus other alcoholic beverages.

So again, it’s still breastfeeding. God bless her. Right? This is a lot, a lot of alcohol. You know, we have other cases of severe thrombocytopenia with heavy alcohol use. I. And these are case studies. Yeah. So these are not experimental. We didn’t like get women drunk to see what would happen cuz it’s not ethical.

And, and that’s kind of how these things go, right? Like we can’t really get a group of people together and say, you guys drink every day and you don’t drink at all, and we’re gonna see how healthy your babies are. So with any medication or drug alcohol, we kind of just have to wait and see people use them and then see what happens to their babies.

Not ideal alcohol. Not ideal, not strong evidence, but alcohol, no, but alcohol is so widely used at this point that we do have some really good evidence because just so many people use it all around the world. So we have a number of studies where, you know we have parents reported how much they drank their milk was tested X day and X day and X day, and, you know, all of that.

And also, I think this is a classic case of them lumping pregnant and lactating people together. Mm-hmm. Even though they’re not the same group. Pregnant people share a bloodstream. With their fetuses, like it’s going through the placenta. It’s still water soluble. Your baby is definitely getting alcohol through the placenta.

It’s like mainlined, lactation. It has about three filters before it gets to them. Yeah. Like it’s going through, your digestive system is going through your liver and then it’s going through your milk tissue into your baby who also has a liver. Yes. You know, so it’s completely different and I think that, you know, More recently, they’ve started to separate lactating groups from pregnant groups.

Mm-hmm. And then on the side of less scary things, but things that we have more study on. So as far as infant sleep goes, we see shorter, more fitful periods of sleep with more alcohol intake from the parent. Which is interesting cuz we see drowsiness in the infant, but also poor sleep quality, essentially.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think we will hear a lot of people say like, oh definitely drink your wine at night right before that nighttime feed. And it’s like, no, that’s maybe not the best idea. Yeah. You know, and then there were, there have been some studies about the long-term effects of alcohol. Ingestion for the breastfed infant, but again, they’re, they’re really hard to interpret the data from because they’re really contradictory because, like Heather said, not only is alcohol affecting their body directly, but it affects the behavior of their parents.

Yeah. You know, and it affects the behavior of the nursing parent, but also if one parent is drinking, we don’t know what that other parent is doing, how that other parent is interacting, if there’s another parent. There are so many questionable factors. I. Right, and moms and babies are so closely tied together, like when one affects the other one constantly.

So especially with behavior and things and developmental milestones and things like that. So that’s definitely hard to pick apart there. Yep. Okay, so I have to mention this thing that I don’t like is that there are products on the market, little alcohol test strips that you can buy specifically to test the alcohol content of your milk.

I do not like them because this is not like some FDA approved product, right? These are just. Things that we don’t know. If there’s solid research behind each product, the sensitivity of each different brand and possibly each different strip varies. Like Heather and I know from using like urinalysis strips, if you leave those fuckers out, They read crazy stuff.

If they get hot, they read weird. If they get cold, they read weird. So test strips like that are very sensitive to environmental factors as far as accuracy goes. So if you have a box of these test strips that have been sitting on the counter in a store that doesn’t have a great. Like climate control, who knows what they’re gonna read, right?

But they’ll definitely make you feel bad, right? And nothing’s gonna suck the joy out of a glass of wine, like testing your milk with that thing and be right and it turns black and you’re like, oh my God. I knew it. Nine more months of never drinking. And I just saw a post actually on our Facebook group, which was really interesting, where somebody had tested milk.

Before freezing it and after, and they got different results. Mm-hmm. But also, if it was the same box of strips and they tested it several months apart, who knows what the factor was, you know? Right, right. But you know, from a nursing standpoint, kind of like you said about the urine dipsticks, those would be considered a point of care test, which is not very accurate.

It’s basically a test that we do to see if we need to do more tests. Right. It’s a screening. It’s a screening tool. It’s not diagnostic. Exactly. So a serum, like if we were to draw your blood, we can get an exact blood alcohol level at the time of the blood draw. Right? So all of these things that I was reading from the LactMed website, you know they did serum studies.

If they were actually measuring the specific alcohol content of that milk, they were not doing dipsticks. So if you want to use a dipstick and you’re confident that it’s fresh and you’ve taken care of it the exact way that you should. Still, keep in mind it’s a screening tool. It’s not a shame tool and it’s not a diagnostic tool.

Mm-hmm. So just keep that in mind if you’re gonna use those things. Yeah. And you know what I, I try to remind people, like if you were to dip this in some orange juice, it’s gonna turn really dark because most orange juice has about half a percent of alcohol in it. What? Yeah. I mean, most juices do. That’s crazy fermentation.

They have so much sugar in them, they ferment slightly and it’s fine. It’s safe. It’s not an alcoholic drink, you know, so I, I just remind you of that for some perspective in that these numbers we’re talking about are extremely tiny and it’s hard to have a good frame of reference for how small that is.

So, you know, think back to this episode. Look at the LactMed website. Look at those numbers for I. You know, if I had four drinks and then breastfed my baby right away how, how, what their blood alcohol content would look like and just, you know, it’s okay if you feel comfortable with that or if you don’t.

There’s no right answer with this. I. You know, and your doctor is not gonna, most likely not gonna tell you it’s okay to drink however much you want because they have to consider liability. But we do have quite a lot of medical professionals who do come out there and say, Hey, it’s safe to have a glass or two of wine, a beer or two.

Whatever. You know what happened to me when I was eight months pregnant? Oh dear. Tell me. With my son, he was breech and his little head was stuck up under my ribs, and as he was growing, it was splitting my ribs apart and hurting my back to the point where I never slept. Like I could not sleep for anything.

So my midwife wrote me a prescription for a couple Ambien just to get me through, and I went to the pharmacy and I tried to fill the script and the pharmacist reached her hand through the window, grabbed my hand, and she said, honey, You’d be better off going to the alcohol aisle and getting yourself a bottle of wine than taking this.

This is a category C. And I was like, okay. And I turned around eight months pregnant. Oh my gosh. Went to the wine aisle, got a bottle of wine, and cried all the way to the register, and then judgmental looks and like, oh my God. I got home and I called my midwife and she was so mad. But you know, to me it’s like we’re so afraid to say, What, what am I trying to say?

We’re so afraid to tell patients, you know, it’s okay because of liability and Yeah. And because we don’t wanna be labeled as like, oh, that’s the provider that lets you drink, quote unquote. Right. You know, you don’t want that label. Right. And because as providers, you know, it’s a fine line to, to be on where, you know, You might not know if you have a client who has a history of alcohol abuse or, or someone, if you’re talking to and you say, Hey, it’s okay to have a little bit of alcohol, if a little bit to them means 20 beers, right.

And then they go get in a car accident. Mm-hmm. It’s the same reason why bartenders aren’t allowed to serve. Obliterated drunk people. Right? Because then they, I mean, it’s like manslaughter, you know? So we have to really think about what we’re doing. But I want to end on a positive note because let’s bring this back to why we’re talking about this in the first place.

Mm-hmm. You want to live your life. You want to have some enjoyment in your life, a little bit of relaxation, a bubble bath with some Enya playing and a. Chilled Chardonnay. Actually, what I like to do is sit in, sit in the bath with Epsom salts, watch a true crime show and have a glass of wine, and you should be able to have that.

If that’s what you want and that’s how you unwind, go for it. You know what? I’ve actually been trying desperately to take a selfie, drinking a glass of wine while breastfeeding so I can put it in the group. I don’t have enough hands, guys. I’m gonna have to get my husband to take a picture, but he’s like a shaky hand person and every time I ask him it’s blurry.

Is it too much to get you one of those hats with like the two straws that come down or a camelback of wine? Is that true? Oh my gosh. That’s, that’s more than 250 liters. It’s, it’s a lot. I don’t drink. I mean like, well, and the nice thing is since I basically had no more than a sip of alcohol in my entire pregnancy, one glass will do it, folks.

And by the way, the only reason she didn’t have a glass of wine during pregnancy is cuz she threw up her whole pregnancy. Yeah, no, I’d have a sip. That’s good. She could barely eat food. Okay, so let’s not, yeah, let’s not assume here. Oh, goodness. But anyway, we want to encourage you to think about this data, figure out where you feel comfortable, okay?

And if you have a history of alcohol abuse, perhaps this is not the time to start again. If you have an active alcohol addiction, it’s a good time to reach out for help. Yeah. And it doesn’t mean you have to stop breastfeeding, it just means that you need to reach out for help. Mm-hmm. And get some guidance along the way.

And the whole point of the whole thing is for you to be stable, happy, healthy, and enjoying your life. So if alcohol is gonna help you with that, great. And if it’s not gonna help you with that and it’s gonna hinder that, then we need to help you fix it. And that’s it.

If you’re pumping milk away from your baby at all at work or wherever you go, you deserve a bougie product. To make that easier for you, you deserve a series chiller and frankly, I could not live without one right now. The series Chiller is an excellent way to store your breast milk safely, and it keeps your breast milk cold for 24 hours.

It is the only thing I use to transport my breast milk to and from work while I’m working. It’s got a sleek and beautiful design. Lots of great colors, high quality materials and manufacturing series chill. Also has other products that you might wanna check out too. My personal favorite is the milk stash.

They have a great nipple shield that actually changes colors and it’s not clear like all the other ones. And you know how we feel about that. If you want to have your very own series chiller, please go to the link in our show notes and use code milk minute 15 at checkout. That’s Milk Minute 15 for 15% off your series.

Chill Products. Enjoy.

Okay, before we give out an award today, we have some patrons to thank. Yeah. We are so excited. We’re getting more and more patrons every day that get access to our merchant behind the scenes episodes. And of course, they get access to our live Q and as if they are a dairy queen. Mm-hmm. Which is our top level patron.

So today we definitely wanna thank Katie s from Guyton, Georgia. And, and we’re thanking Maria s from Lewisburg, West Virginia. She’s a friend of mine and I’m so thankful for her support. We love watching you guys grow with your babies and in your lactation experience, and we’re here for you. And if you need anything, you can become a patron at www.patreon.com/milk minute podcast.

All right let’s give out an award. I’m excited. Who are we gonna give it to today? Today we wanna thank Janelle D and she says, today Marks one full year of breastfeeding, my babe. The Facebook group breastfeeding for busy moms had a huge role in that, so thank you to everyone, especially Maureen Farrell and Heather O’Neil and the best podcast.

It’s also the first day I’ve changed a dirty diaper after catching him eating dirt last night. If this is what boys are like, bring it on, I guess. Well, Janelle, we are going to give you the dearly yearly award. Oh, how lovely. I just imagine you as two little deer skipping through the forest eating dirt and changing dirty poopy diapers.

We hope that you have another great year to come, and we are so proud that you made it a whole year of breastfeeding. That’s amazing. Good job. Yeah. Congratulations. And everybody else, if you have a breastfeeding win, you can email to them, to us, or you can submit them on our Facebook group. Yep. Please do email us at milk Minute podcast gmail.com.