What do the following headlines all have in common?
Drunk Mom's Baby Dies During Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding Mom Kills Baby While Drunk
Mom Suffocates Baby While Breastfeeding, But It Could Have Been Prevented
"They all describe incidents that are about alcohol and breastfeeding," might seem like a reasonable response. Actually, the funny thing is that they all describe incidents that are indeed about alcohol but not really about breastfeeding at all. Here's why.
From the first story:
...for a mom from Maryland, breastfeeding her baby turned to tragedy over the weekend. Cops say Yadina Indira Morales was both breastfeeding and "highly intoxicated." Together the two proved to be dangerous for her 2-month-old daughter, who was found unresponsive and later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Most respectable pediatricians will tell a breastfeeding mom to pump and dump if she's going to drink. Baby should either get formula or some breast milk expressed before the alcohol was consumed. However, it doesn't seem like the alcohol in mom's milk was the worst part here; it was mom's drunken state. Cops indicate Morales passed out while breastfeeding and that the baby was found underneath her, unresponsive.In fact, the "alcohol in mom's milk" was not even an issue here. The tragic death of this little baby was due to suffocation when her intoxicated mother collapsed on top of her.
Second story:
Imagine a mom's worst nightmare. She settles in to breastfeed her baby girl for the last time for the night, baby snuggled at the breast, happy and content. Then she falls asleep. When she wakes up, the baby's dead. Would you judge her? Now what if she had an entire bottle of wine in her system? ...A glass of wine, one mug of beer, when you're breastfeeding, and most of us will look the other way. But I've yet to meet a doc who'd suggest the best way to build up your milk supply is to chug that wine... Just like pregnancy, breastfeeding requires a mom to keep baby in mind as she eats and imbibes throughout the day.Well I'd agree that you shouldn't drink a bottle of wine and get into bed with your baby... but that's something you shouldn't do regardless of whether you are feeding your baby from breast or bottle. Like the first baby, this poor little girl died because she was suffocated, not because of alcohol-laced breastmilk.
Story No. 3:
It's a mother's nightmare come true. A 1-month-old baby boy recently died via suffocation while his mother was breastfeeding him. The 32-year-old new mom had reportedly gone out for a night of drinking, and when she returned to nurse her baby, she fell asleep while doing so. The next morning when she woke up... she realized her brand new baby had passed away. I will say, probably not the best idea to go out imbibing all night -- if this is true -- when you're breastfeeding. ...You have to give up things. And "nights of drinking" are among those things. If you really, really can't do that -- honestly? Switch to formula... And, please, don't co-sleep if you're wasted.The writer is right on the money with that last comment. It is not, however, clear how feeding a baby with formula (or expressed breastmilk in a bottle, or Cheetos, for that matter) would have prevented the baby from suffocating as he lay in bed with his mother.
Alcohol and breastmilk
There is a paucity of really good data on breastfeeding and alcohol, but Linda Geddes' book Bumpology (which is well worth a read, by the way) does a good job of rounding up and analyzing what evidence there is. As far as we can tell, about the worst thing that can be said about breastfeeding while imbibing is that babies whose mothers have drunk heavily (we're talking several drinks, mind you, not a glass of beer with a meal) show subtle changes in their sleep/wake patterns: namely, they sleep more frequently but in smaller doses, and spend less time in active sleep. That, for me, is a reason to refrain from feeding for the next four hours or thereabouts (and use expressed milk or formula in the meantime if the baby needs feeding) if one has had more than a couple of drinks and is actually buzzed.
But even if you neglect to take this precautionary stance, your baby is not going to die or even get sick, and it really is deceitful for writers and editors to imply that this could happen. There are rare reports of long-term health issues (obesity, elevated cortisol levels etc.) in babies who are being breastfed all day every day by mothers who are chronic heavy drinkers, but I've been unable to find a single case of acute alcohol poisoning resulting from breastfeeding while drunk.
(Note: "Pump and dump" has been largely discredited. There are certain medications which if taken will stay trapped in breastmilk, requiring the milk to be pumped away; alcohol in breastmilk, however, is gradually wafted back into the bloodstream over the next few hours in a process known as "retrograde diffusion," leaving the milk clean. The only reason to P&D is if delaying the next feed causes you to become uncomfortably engorged.)
Beer.....mmmmmm
BreastsBreastsBreastsBreastsBreasts
Because they stop short of actually saying "alcohol in breastmilk killed these babies," the articles and their headlines are not actually telling fibs. However, when you juxtapose these two ideas against the background of a social context in which most people are actually quite confused about whether drinking while breastfeeding is acceptable (partly because excessive anxiety about drinking during pregnancy has bled over into breastfeeding), you ensure that most people will come away from the article under the impression that drinking while breastfeeding is dangerous and poisons infants. Certainly the writer of the first two Cafemom articles seems to have got this idea, judging by her dippy comment about how "If you really, really can't [give up nights of drinking]--honestly? Switch to formula." As though a bottle of Similac would have somehow miraculously stopped the baby from, you know, suffocating to death.
I can see why sites like Cafemom choose to turn things into "breastfeeding arguments" when they're actually not: you get to stir up the mummy wars in the comment section, bring the sanctimummies out in force AND include the word "!!!Breast!!!" in your headline, all of which tend to generate more clicks and page views than titles like "Baby Dies Due To Failure to Follow Safe Bedsharing Guidelines" which would have been a lot more accurate. (I suppose I'm a bit of a hypocrite in this regard since my blog also brandishes the word "breast" around... but in my defense, I get about 600 page views a day whereas CafeMom probably gets several million.) Trouble is, before you know it you've then got this rumor buzzing around that There Was Once This Mum Who Poisoned Her Baby With Her Alcoholic Breastmilk, which in turn leads to breastfeeding mothers having a drink with a meal being judged and tutted at... or, in one case, having the cops called on them. (And check the poster in the Comments section who defends the police-calling waitress's actions on the grounds that "Considering that a mom just killed her baby (from alcohol poisoning) consuming large amounts of alcohol while breastfeeding is dangerous.")
Further reading
Mulled wine? But you're breastfeeding... Linda Geddes (Bumpology) on alcohol and breastfeeding
You should not be drunk while caring for your baby (from PhD in Parenting)
Alcohol and lactation: a systematic review Quite interesting reading. One (plausible) argument often made against overly strict anti-alcohol guidelines for breastfeeding mothers is that they can form a barrier to breastfeeding by making it sound like you have to be a saint if you want to nurse; this review makes the case that giving mothers no guidelines at all could also become a barrier, on the grounds that drinking significant amounts of alcohol can subtly change babies' wake/sleep patterns and make them harder to care for, leading to maternal exhaustion. It's food for thought, that's for sure.
