How long after drinking should i pump and dump

However, higher levels of alcohol consumption can interfere with the milk ejection reflex letdown while maternal alcohol levels are high. Over time, excessive alcohol consumption could lead to shortened breastfeeding duration due to decreased milk production.

Caring for an infant while intoxicated is not safe. If a caregiver drinks excessively, he or she should arrange for a sober adult to care for the infant during this time.

A mother may choose to express or pump milk after consuming alcohol to ease her physical discomfort or adhere to her milk expression schedule.

If a mother decides to express or pump milk within two hours per drink of consuming alcohol, the mother may choose to discard the expressed milk. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Alcohol Minus Related Pages. So at any given time, the concentration of alcohol in your milk is similar to the concentration of alcohol in your blood.

The question is — what is that proportion? Just like your blood alcohol level, breast milk alcohol levels are highest about 30 to 60 minutes after a single drink. The more you drink, the longer the alcohol stays in your bloodstream — and milk — and the higher the concentration becomes. If you have one drink, most of the alcohol should be out of your system in about 2 to 3 hours, although this can vary.

Babies up to the age of 3 months metabolize alcohol at half the speed an adult does, according to the La Leche League. Even older babies process alcohol more slowly than adults do. Your baby also has an immature liver and rapidly developing brain, which may be more susceptible to the effects of alcohol. Daily consumption of more than one drink per day or excessive drinking by a breastfeeding mother likely contributes to poor weight gain, disrupted sleep patterns, psychomotor skills delay , and possibly even cognitive delay later in life.

Babies may drink up to 20 percent less milk in the 3 to 4 hours after mom has had a drink. They also can have disrupted sleeping patterns after even one drink, and babies whose moms are light drinkers may sleep less than average. A large study published in showed a connection between moms who drank while breastfeeding and lower cognitive scores when their children were 6 to 7 years old.

They concluded that this means that the actual alcohol exposure through the breast milk was responsible for the cognitive changes, and not just other factors related to moms who drink. Animal studies have also supported these findings.

You may have heard that alcohol can help you relax and promote milk flow, and that beer in particular can increase your milk production. Having two or more drinks has been shown to decrease the letdown — milk ejection — reflex of nursing moms.

Over time, this can decrease your milk supply overall due to not fully emptying the breast with each feeding. An older study actually showed a temporary 23 percent reduction in milk volume after the participating moms had just one drink. Pumping — and dumping out — breast milk after you drink alcohol does not get rid of the alcohol in your breast milk.

If you have two glasses of wine, pump your milk out 30 minutes later, and then nurse your baby an hour later, the new milk you produced in that time will still have alcohol in it, because your blood still has alcohol in it.

Certainly valid! A more effective option is to nurse your baby immediately before having a drink, and then wait 2 to 3 hours after a single drink to nurse your baby again.

Rather than let this get you down, consider some alternatives. There are a number of great mocktail recipes you can try making at home — and your other pregnant or breastfeeding friends will appreciate them too! You can also ask the bartender at your favorite spot to make you something refreshing and non-alcoholic. It can also potentially change the taste of the breast milk making the breast milk undesirable to some infants.

In cases of high alcohol consumption, baby may be sleepier after consuming the breast milk, but not sleep as long. Bottom line? Drinking in moderation is likely fine while breastfeeding, but more research is needed.

Drinking more heavily may have consequences for baby, but more research is needed. However, current research seems to indicate that these guidelines may be overly restrictive. There still needs to be more research done on the immediate and long-term impact of alcohol, marijuana, and other substances on breastfed infants. If you wish to drink, the AAP advises drinking right after nursing or expressing breast milk and waiting at least 2 hours before the next feeding. As research in these areas continue, more guidance from the AAP should hopefully become available.

Always check with your physician before breastfeeding while using prescription medications. Research tells us nursing mothers can safely consume at least milligrams of caffeine per day — which is roughly equivalent to 2 to 3 cups of coffee — without fear of your infant seeming jittery or losing sleep. Some studies have even found that up to 5 cups of coffee per day can be consumed without side effects for the breastfeeding infant!

Nursing mothers should try to breastfeed right before consuming caffeine and try to minimize their coffee and caffeine consumption when breastfeeding premature and newborn babies, as their under-developed systems metabolize it so much slower. Marijuana can pass through breast milk. So once in their bodies, THC may stay there longer.