You should not be drunk while caring for your baby
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 
Photo credit: Dan4th on flickr
There has been a lot of media attention lately on mothers who were arrested while apparently breastfeeding drunk. There is emphasis put on the word breastfeeding. Like it is a horrible and awful sin to be drinking while breastfeeding. A few examples:
- A drunken mother was breast-feeding her five-month-old baby at the wheel when she almost crashed into a police car, horrified officers discovered. The teenager was so sloshed she could not provide a roadside breath test and was arrested at the scene in the Australian town of Alice Springs. (From Mail Online)
- A North Dakota woman accused of breastfeeding her six-week-old baby while drunk has pleaded guilty to child neglect. PRISON POSSIBLE. Twenty-six-year-old Stacey Anvarinia could face up to five years in prison when she's sentenced on the felony charge in August. (From Associated Press in Edmonton Sun)
I don't think it is a good idea to be drunk while breastfeeding. But here is the thing, if someone is drunk while caring for a baby, the damage that could be done by breastfeeding is the least of the problems. If you are drunk and caring for a baby, you could:
- Drop the baby
- Hurt yourself and be unable to care for the baby
- Be too drunk to take your injured self or injured baby to the hospital
- Fall asleep with and suffocate the baby
- Pass out and be unable to respond to the baby's needs
- Do stupid things like driving a car while drunk and not even putting the baby in a car seat
Breastfeeding while drunk is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. As the first commenter on this post Teenager Caught Drunk Driving WHILE BREASTFEEDING says:
Luckily for the baby, the amount of alcohol in your breast milk mirrors your blood alcohol level. So, even if mom had an nearly lethal level of 0.2% that's not even the equivalent of a tenth of a weak beer. The baby was more likely to incur bodily harm by being handled by a drunken loser than to experience alcohol poisoning.
I said as much when I commented on a review of the Milk Screen product that allows you to measure whether you have too much alcohol in your breast milk or not. I said:
Thank you for the review. It is interesting to see how the thing works.
However, I wonder what they use to determine “safe” levels.
I don’t know that I would rely on the research listed on Milkscreen’s Web site. I’m sure they picked and chose the studies that would make their product seem necessary.
If you look at LLL’s FAQ on alcohol, there are a few things of interest:
1) “Maternal blood alcohol levels must attain 300 mg/dl before significant side effects are reported in the infant. ” That number didn’t really mean anything to me, so I looked it up and it turns out that those types of alcohol levels would only be found in chronic alcoholics or someone that has been drinking straight for several days (Source).
That doesn’t mean that you hadn’t had too much to drink that one night and perhaps the test is right and you shouldn’t have been nursing. But would you have stepped behind the wheel of a car? Do you have a breathalyzer at home to blow in before you drive if you’ve been drinking the night before?
2) The thing that breastfeeding moms should be more worried about perhaps is the effect that drinking too much has on their milk supply, letdown and intake levels by the baby. If a woman drinks regularly, even moderate amounts, and her baby is having trouble gaining weight, then she might want to consider stopping for a while.
For me personally, I do breastfeed and I do drink. But in the more than 4 years now that I have been nursing, there is only one night that I ever had more than 2 drinks and that was a total of maybe 3 drinks or a maximum of 4. I had those drinks early in the evening (between 5pm and 7pm), knowing that I wouldn’t be home until around 2am. I think even if I did nurse when I got home and even if the alcohol levels were a little higher than perhaps ideal, I don’t think it would have long lasting detrimental effects on my child. If I did it every night, perhaps. But once in 4 years…not the end of the world.
It is completely safe for a mom to have one or two drinks while breastfeeding. That doesn't mean that she has to. Some prefer not to. But I hate when I hear about moms that decide they need to wean before their wedding anniversary or before the 4th of July or before Christmas because they want to have a drink or two.
There are some studies that have said that alcohol in your breastmilk can impact your milk supply and can impact the baby's sleep. So if you are having trouble maintaining your supply or if your baby is not sleeping well (and we all know that is relative...most babies are not good sleepers, alcohol or no alcohol), then you may want to give up your drinks for a bit and see if it improves. But otherwise: Cheers! Enjoy a drink or two. You do not need to be a martyr in order to be a breastfeeding mom.
But let's be clear. Parents (that includes moms AND dads) who are drunk while caring for their children are irresponsible. Perhaps they are alcoholics and deserve to get help. Perhaps they are just making a stupid mistake. But this shouldn't be about breastfeeding unless the mom had hired a designated babysitter to take care of the child while she went on regular drinking binges and was having the baby brought to her to be breastfed while she was so drunk that she was almost passing out.
For more thoughts on the most recent case of the North Dakota woman who was arrested while caring for her baby while drunk see:
- Mother Charged For Drunk Breastfeeding: Details Emerge, and the Case Makes Less Sense by Cate Nelson @ Eco Child's Play
- Yeah, I drink while breastfeeding. So arrest me. by Katie Allison Granju @ Babble
Reader Comments (44)
Thanks for linking to our review! It was written by Andi of http://www.andikuhn.com.
I drink, and I breastfeed. I don't drink and breastfeed at the same time. And I don't believe that formula feeding would give me any further opportunities to drink because I also completely agree that no one (MOTHER OR FATHER) should be inebriated while caring for a child.
But having one or two drinks for most people would not cause inebriation to the point of impairing child care.
Far, far more parents engage in all sorts of activities drunk than mothers who breastfeed after having one or two drinks. Go to any big public activity or to a theme part that sells liquor. How many drunk adults are there with children and babies?
A lot.
Are they being persecuted by the media? No.
Asinine.
I'm so over the current focus on this mom who breastfed "drunk."
While I don't think I have ever had wine and breastfed at the same time, I do have a glass when I know I am not going to nurse right away. I have become much more relaxed with my third baby though. With my first, I don't think I had a drop the whole 15 months he breastfed!
I think there is some strange fascination with what women do WHILE BREASTFEEDING! Can you shop and breastfeed? That woman is eating lunch while breastfeeding, and in a restaurant! That baby is in a sling, and breastfeeding! Silly.
I think driving while breastfeeding is absolutely dangerous. There is a reason we have to, and should, put babies in carseats. Do I think breastfeeding a baby after a drink or two is neglect? If it happens more often than not, yes. If it happens a couple of times, no. There is much worse that you pointed out that can happen if the parent, or parents, are inebriated.
I just wish more media attention was paid to the positive instead of the sensational.
It's a choice: do I want to party like it's 1999 or do I want to be present and responsible? I drank a little during my nursing days, but was always very careful to do so after a nursing session. And I never over did it. It was just never that important to me - so, yeah, maybe these breastfeeding moms who get DRUNK do have an issue or two.
Very interesting post. Drinking one or two drinks is a choice while nursing (as you point out - I only started drinking wine again when my son was going longer at night. why? just my choice really, and I'm a light weight with drinking and didn't like to feel woozy at all while caring for my son)
However, there is a greater issue here and I'm glad you pointed it out. Parents becoming drunk (and there is a difference I think between having a drink or two with dinner and getting drunk) should not be also caring for their children at the same time. Your faculties are so out of whack at that point, in case of emergency your reaction would be delayed or nonresponsive.
This is more than just about breastfeeding.
As a breastfeeding mom of a 16-month-old, I choose not to drink but that is my choice. I'm just not much of a drinker. I think having one or two glasses of wine, or whatever, is fine but becoming intoxicated while caring for a child is irresponsible. Period.
I am the organizer of a large single parent's group and during several events recently, I've witnessed some members drink entirely too much with their kids present. This has led to some uncomfortable situations where they were basically unable to care for their children.
I agree with all of your points. This is bigger than just breastfeeding.
BTW, how in the hell can you breastfeed and drive? As dangerous as that sounds, that mom succeeds as a hardcore multi-tasker!
This makes me think of the 'risks' associated with wearing a sling. The baby could fall! The baby could be burned by your cooking! These are really just risks associated with carrying a child, REGARDLESS of how you're carrying that child. Similarly, it's being drunk while you're responsible for a child that's the problem, not breastfeeding.
I'm with you. I would hate to see someone wean because they feel the alternative is to martyr themselves on the altar of breastfeeding. Just because we're nursing doesn't mean we're unable to make responsible, reasoned choices about alcohol consumption (or anything else for that matter). Geesh.
Great topic! I had the same reaction to those news stories. Breastfeeding is what everybody is worried about?! I think part of it is that most of society just knows so little about how breastfeeding really works -- including nursing mothers. So often people will comment that I must really have to watch what I eat since I'm nursing. Uh, not really. I mean, yes, I should try to nourish myself properly, but the baby's going to get what it needs no matter what I eat -- pretty much. And yes, I can drink coffee and have a couple drinks now and again without poisoning my child in the process. As you say, if a mother is too drunk to breastfeed, she is too drunk to care for her child period.
@Amber: How dare you say that wearing a baby in a sling is like breastfeeding drunk! (sorry...couldn't resist)
[...] as Annie points out: “Maternal blood alcohol levels must attain 300 mg/dl before significant side effects are [...]
I'm in the uber careful camp. I fret over whether or not to take a tylenol for an awful headache and would NEVER consume alcohol while caring for a child or breastfeeding. Of course, I'm excluding here the trace amounts that might be present in a food dish prepared with vanilla extract.
But before I start sounding like a martyr, I've never tried alcohol outside of what may have been in a perscription medication when I had need of cough suppressing goodness.
Coming from a family with a vast number of alcoholics, I determined that the risks of trying alcohol and becoming addicted were greater than the risk of missing out on something I might enjoy.
That said, I agree that drunkeness while "caring" for a child is a bigger problem by far than possibly passing on a tiny amount of alcohol through breastmilk, and I have to assume that the reason that the focus in these cases is on the act of breastfeeding is twofold. First, there is, like it or not, a large contingent who do not like breastfeeding for a plethora of reasons, and like to present it negatively. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, most people do drink alcohol, and a lot of them have on occasion or more often been drunk while caring for children, or at least in the presence thereof, and if the problem in these stories was the drinking, then they have to reassess their own behaviors and might not like to view themselves through the same lense they view these others. Remember, far fewer people are breastfeeders than drinkers. Even women who have in the past breastfed often look for reasons to justify their quitting sooner than they'd have liked to, and by casting aspersions can perhaps also feel somewhat better.
I could be wrong, I frequently am, but it seems that people know that there is something wtong with the various pictures, but have to blame the detail that is different from them.
Thanks for the link, Annie.
I agree that no one should hang with child while drunk. I myself partake with the kids awake while we have a family party or whatever. Generally I wait until they're in bed. And my 15mo is slowly weening (much by his choice), so that's not the issue.
I see this case as a feminist issue. I'm not sure what the cops' issue was, especially with their shock of her BFing *in front* of them. That's seriously their problem?! Maybe her previous run-in with the law already made her suspicious to them. We still don't know what her previous criminal record is.
But to arrest her--with no BAC test--but let the allegedly woman-abusing boyfriend walk free...it reeks of misogyny. Not to mention poor lawyering.
If anything, she needs intervention and counseling and certainly support throughout her community. I hope that's what she gets when she is sentenced next month.
Oh! I almost forgot to plug a different blog I wrote on the subject:
http://blog.thenatureschild.com/2009/07/alcohol-and-breastfeedingnow-crime.html
;)
Also, I'm waiting for the police to arrest the next dad they see who is simultaneously holding a beer and a baby. You think?
LOL! Arrest a dad holding a beer and a baby. Love that!
phd, you are SO right -- you nailed what has always bothered me about this story. That and everyone who yammers on about breastfeeding being difficult because they have to give up booze, spicy food, and cauliflower. Okay, maybe the cauliflower is not so much a hardship. But ALL these things taken together make it seem like breastfeeding is some "special" and "difficult" activity, much like being a monk, that regular people can't do.
That's why I've always hated the ads that had mom in a Lanz nightgown on a glider nursing. If you had to be chained to a chair and a nursing pillow, I' m sure that I wouldn't have logged 10 years worth of woman-hours nursing (4 kids; twins at the end) if I couldn't leave the house or have some fajitas. Booze, I can take or leave. But spicy food? Never! :)
It's all setting the bar for breastfeeding so high that people forget that it's motherhood that's hard! (See http://tinyurl.com/lpv38a)
You rock, once again!
Well said. I am still aghast that that woman who was "caught" breastfeeding her child while drunk has pleaded guilty to neglect. There must be specifics to the case that the general public doesn't know about because neglect? Please! She was breastfeeding! Did they test her breastmilk alcohol levels? I hope they research effects of alcohol and breastfeeding and drop the charges. And then go arrest the ass who physically assaulted her.
Anyway, Bravo for pointing out that it's all of those other reasons it's dangerous to breastfeed your baby while drunk, least of the problems being the breast milk issue.
@Melodie: Maybe this was just a typo in your comment, but just in case I want to clarify that those are not my reasons that it is dangerous to breastfeed your baby while drunk. It is my list of reasons it is dangerous to PARENT drunk, period.
What I think is interesting is that if the woman had been giving her baby a bottle of formula while drunk, nobody would have cared. There is such a breastfeeding taboo, that the implicit message, becomes "Don't breastfeed if you are someone who drinks. Ever."
I, personally, am much more cautious about consuming too much caffeine while breastfeeding than having an occasional beer or glass of wine! I think it's worth mentioning here that there's no reason to "pump and dump" when a breastfeeding mother chooses to drink :
http://www.kellymom.com/health/lifestyle/alcohol.html
"Alcohol does not accumulate in breastmilk, but leaves the milk as it leaves the blood; so when your blood alcohol levels are back down, so are your milk alcohol levels."
Now, where did I put my beer....;-)
thanks for this! I can set aside my guilt trip for having 3 drinks one night after 2 years of close to nothing at all, and nursing in the early hours after that night out. I felt so so bad. I never realised that the alcohol level in breast milk were actually reasonably low.
And my first reaction on the news item was also - why on earth is she driving? How can she drive and nurse at the same time? Does any one believe that headline? Surely that's sensationalism.
Actually, if your baby could sit unassisted and you didn't have a stick shift, if just *might* work -- but I'd never try it! :)
What's *really* a crime is all the times I nursed my babies in their car seats on road trips. You see, I remained belted in and so did they. And now I've gone from a 32DD to a 32L7long. So not the look I was going for!
Meant 32long. See, not only my boobies, but my brain has suffered!
Thanks so much for this post!
The alcohol content of breastmilk is a total non-issue. As I explained to someone recently, the amount of alcohol allowable in non-alcoholic beer (legal for minors in many states) is 0.5%. For breastmilk to have 0.5% blood alcohol, the mother would be dead.
I wonder how much of the outrage at a breastfeeding woman drinking has just bled over from the idea that pregnant women shouldn't drink. That's such a powerful idea that I won't drink at all even though I know that my previous level of drinking - one glass of wine every couple of weeks, on average - is pretty much zero risk for the kid. So I totally understand people who avoid drinking & nursing: it gives you one less thing to worry about, one less thing to be criticized about.
And then people conflate "having a drink" while/before nursing with nursing while drunk. They're different. If you want to get drunk, then just like you should plan your ride home, or think ahead to the job you have to get out of bed for in the morning, or think about how many drinks will be too many (I know I calculate these things in my head at the beginning of the evening, does everybody?) you should also think ahead about how your kid will be safely cared for.
In other words, drinking while lactating is just like anything else - you have to be sensible about it. Which most of us are capable of doing, without external judgment and "if you touch a drop of alcohol you are a bad mother" sorts of attitudes.
Just to clarify - I don't drink now because I'm pregnant; I'll likely pick up the habit again (and chug, like, a whole glass of wine at the dinner table once in a while) once the kid is born.
[...] You should not be drunk while caring for your baby | PhD in Parenting By phdinparenting There has been a lot of media attention lately on mothers who were arrested while apparently breastfeeding drunk. There is emphasis put on the world. PhD in Parenting – http://www.phdinparenting.com/ [...]
Moderation in life. I'm breastfeeding my third in four years and over the years I've become a bit more lenient with coffee and drinks, but never to excess. I do mourn the bf relationships that end to allow for some great indulgence.
I agree with slee above and am in the uber-careful camp too. Even if I was consumed by horrible headaches whilst pregnant, I still didn't take anything for them and so with that attitude, alcohol was definitely a no-go for me. I'm still teetotal now that I'm breastfeeding, but have admittedly never been a drinker save for the odd glass of red wine with a meal or fun experiments whilst younger with absinthe.
Thank you for trying to clear up this situation. What a shame that breastfeeding is getting negative publicity when the drunken parenting is the true issue. I hope that more well spoken bloggers will join in with you and help bring awareness to the real issue in this situation, which as we are aware is not the alcohol content of the breast milk.
At first glance, this looks like yet another example of a culture that's sagging deeper into prohibitionism, risk-aversion, and sloppy thinking.
But it's hard to even form an opinion without an objective definition of "drunk." I mean, looking at the bottles on the counter, some might call me "drunk" right now -- but I'm typing 60-some words a minute, waiting for the glue to dry on my plumbing project, and I'm not dropping any babies, or, funnily enough, breastfeeding. :-)
I didn't see the allegedly drunk woman in question. Was she slurring? Stumbling? Vomiting? Or just tipsy? They just don't say. And shouldn't this bit make us all a little nervous: "Investigators believed she was drunk, and her arrest on a charge of child abuse and neglect did not require a test."?
"‘Our officers handle it so much that it is pretty much a general knowledge thing to know when someone is intoxicated. It’s pretty obvious.’"
Yeah. Just relax and trust us.
(Um. I hope I shouldn't have to add, that I wasn't recommending drunk-parenting, and that I agree with the other commenters who point out that this lady's drinking was insignificant in that sad picture. And geez, those other stories? WHY does the breastfeeding even warrant a mention, when drunk driving and crashing is at hand?? Whaa...?)
Ahhh, a bit of common sense. I enjoy one glass of wine, a couple of times a week. I feed my baby before, during, or after - whatever she wants. It's not going to hurt her. Better breast milk with a tiny bit of alcohol in it than formula milk, no? But alcohol combined with a bad night's sleep is not good, so I tend to abstain during bad patches. If only we could get out the message that breastfeeding fits into anyone's life and you don't have to be a teetotal saint!
[...] PhD in Parenting is talking about drinking while breastfeeding. [...]
[...] PhD in Parenting is talking about drinking while breastfeeding. [...]
It's funny I came across this post while looking to see what issues arise to cause birth complication and or death, I am pregnant with my third and worried more about something bad happening than drinking. However, I must say I found this article very interesting and the replies both helpful and interesting. With my first I was younger and more irresponsible, I did return to drinking two months or so after birth, I would pump and dump, then she would not have enough milk so I had to supplement with formula, I was stressed out about a million things and my milk sadly vanished at 4 months. I felt like a failure for not being able to breast feed. My second came along 2 years and 4 months later, I rarely drank and still pumped and dumped but my supply was healthier this time around and I breast fed for almost a year, she lost interest around 11 1/2 months when she realized she could walk around and play while holding her own bottle, which had breast milk in it for a while longer and eventually formula. Two tears later, now in my third pregnancy I have not drank a drop during my pregnancy, when I did have an occasional glass of wine with my first 2. I was planning on simply not drinking while I breast fed this baby for many reasons, mostly I have noticed how I have a better control on my emotions when not drinking. Anyway, I find it helpful to know I can actually have a drink or 2 and not throw out my breast milk and not harm my baby. Too bad they dont tell us that in the beginning. Anyway, I think the issue should have been more focused on the fact the lady drove while holding her baby and the dad did nothing to stop this! They should both be in trouble for endangering the child, the only thing she seems to have done right is breastfeed, too bad she was drinking ad crashing into cops when she did feed her baby.
[...] Someone I’ve heard of added an interesting post on You should not be drunk while caring for your baby | PhD in ParentingHere’s a small excerpt [...]
Thanks for a great summary. This is really good demonstration of the invisible barriers to breastfeeding in Western societies. In these cases the breastfeeding is a non-issue compared with everything else, but that is the focus of the report. Yet how about some comparative risks - the risk of driving sober with your child in their carseat? If they're not in a restraint? The risk of a bottle of formula? I'm guessing that all of these are actually riskier than breastfeeding after a glass or two of wine.
[...] Use common sense about drinking. You should not be drunk while caring for your baby [...]
[...] about the rash of articles and arrests related to breastfeeding mothers drinking and concluded that you should not be drunk when caring for your baby, whether you are breastfeeding or not, so breastfeeding is really irrelevant to the case/issue. A formula feeding mom should not be drunk [...]
Hi there
I have someone I know who nurses there baby while drinking large amounts of alcohol, I;m concern because I think its going to affect the baby.
Cary
[...] does pass into the breastmilk, but only in very small amounts. A woman would have to be very drunk while breastfeeding/pumping in order for it to create a risk to .... Small amounts of alcohol while breastfeeding is [...]
[...] as I have previously ranted, parents shouldn’t be drunk when caring for a baby (whether breastfeeding or not). So the issue here isn’t really whether alcohol is passing through breastmilk, but whether [...]
I am wondering how this plays out i was recently in a case that i could have been charged with neglect. Cause I was drinking while caring for my children, they were all in bed and asleep and well cared for i wast drunk, to the point that i could not care for my children. I agree with what has been said I just don't understand. How can someone tell me that i am a bad parent for having a few, and tell me that i am neglecting my children when I wasn't.
Well, Robert — I think the question then is, what would you do if an unexpected emergency happened? How would you react if there was, say, a fire or an intruder? It's your job as a parent to handle such things. In my opinion, there's nothing much less manly than being useless in a crisis.
Thank you so much for this! I had a wild night with my girlfriends last night, and had a few too many. My 15 month old woke up in the middle of the night, which she typically does not do, and wanted to nurse. My husband put her right down beside me, and woke me up to nurse her. Neither of us were thinking clearly, it was 2 a.m.! So, out of habit I whip it out and snuggle up with my little girl. Then I realized I was still drunk! She nursed for a few minutes, and I stopped her, despite the tears. Today she has been tired all day, and I've been beating myself up. My husband pointed out a few things to me: a) mothers smoked and drank while breastfeeding in the fifties and sixties, and those generations are fine, and b) she had been outside running and playing and splashing in the baby pool all day, and had even missed her nap, so she was just exhausted. This isn't something I ever plan to do again, and we had everything covered, bottles and such, it was just a sleepy parents' mistake. Thank you for this article, I don't feel like I permanently damaged my child!
[...] thing they were doing that was the focus, it was the BREASTFEEDING DRUNK. The reality is that you shouldn't be drunk (or high) if you are responsible for children, whether you are breastfeeding or not. But a pinot noir, a pilsner, a pina colada or a bit of pot, [...]
So yeah there's a lot of things out there going on with moms /parent. you see it all the time parents smoking pot, drinking having fun. drinking while breastfeeding is just the same is smoking crack and breastfeeding. There are long term affects to all those choices. Liver issues, kidney failure, diabetes, juvenile obesity..... pick 1 I mean any 1 of those things you could be doing to your baby if you choose to breastfeed while drinking. Maybe even more! So make your choice doctors advise against it surgeon general advise against it there's a reason for that. So when your kid grows up and tell you they don't want anything to do with you because they're having any 1 of those problems or more that's your fault. Once we become parents were no longer our own self we have to make the choices that are best for our children. And if ur gonna make the decision to drink we should also make the decision not to breastfeed are children and and pump that crap into our children. None of this one or two crap if you need 1 or 2 drinks a day or even 1 or 2 drinks a week you have a problem you and maybe you should bottle feed! Because drinking 1 or 2 is no different than getting drunk truly the alcohol is still in your system and it still going to your baby