Drinking beer during breastfeeding

Women cannot drink beer while breastfeeding, mainly because alcohol will affect the health of breast milk, affect the baby's nervous excitement and sleep disorders, and increase the burden on the mother's liver, so alcohol should be avoided during breastfeeding. Some women need to drink postpartum wine and sweet wine during breastfeeding. These actually have no effect on postpartum women. Everyone should not have misunderstandings and should adjust their diet after delivery.

Pay attention to these three points in your diet during breastfeeding

1. Avoid Alcohol

In some places, there is a custom of drinking rice wine and fermented glutinous rice soup during the confinement period, which is said to help increase milk production. In fact, breastfeeding mothers should be careful to avoid anything containing alcohol. This is because alcohol can enter breast milk.

There is no safe amount of alcohol for babies, which means that not even a little bit of alcohol can be consumed! Once a baby consumes alcohol, it will cause the baby to become abnormally excited or even have sleep disorders. In severe cases, it will cause harm to the baby's heart and liver.

Mothers should avoid consuming things like postpartum wine, fermented glutinous rice soup, and sweet wine. Even some foods cooked with cooking wine or beer should be eaten as little as possible. You should know that even after 2-3 hours of stewing or slow roasting, 5-10% of alcohol will still remain.

What should a breastfeeding mother do if she needs to socialize?

If you can avoid drinking, then don't drink. If you must drink, the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) recommends that the amount of alcohol you drink should not exceed 0.5g of alcohol per kilogram of body weight. For most mothers, a 355mL bottle of beer or 118mL of wine is safe.

Another solution is that if you have to drink alcohol, try to drink it right after feeding, or express the milk in advance so that there is enough time between feedings to remove the alcohol from the breast milk to the greatest extent possible.

2. Drink less coffee and tea

The total daily caffeine intake during breastfeeding is safe if it does not exceed 200 mg, and it will not cause harm to the baby. So, if you really want to drink, one cup is fine to satisfy your craving.

But despite the safety range, every baby's situation is different. Therefore, for safety reasons, mothers are advised to drink it right after feeding, and pay attention to whether the baby has obvious signs of irritability or abnormal excitement.

Mothers of premature babies need to be cautious because their livers have weaker metabolic capacity and they should try to avoid foods that may increase the burden on their gastrointestinal function. This is the mother's responsibility.

3. Avoid foods that cause discomfort

If there is a history of allergies among immediate family members, the mother should pay attention to her diet.

Allergies in children who are exclusively breastfed may be related to the mother's diet. If the child's systemic reaction is clearly related to the mother's consumption of certain foods, and after professional judgment, it is determined that it is a food allergy, the mother is advised to avoid such foods and replace them with other foods with similar nutritional content.

Fish is a good food. It is not only rich in protein and relatively low in calories, but the unsaturated fatty acids in it can also help the baby's brain development.

But you should avoid eating fish with high mercury content, such as tilefish, shark, swordfish, tuna, etc. Excessive mercury will enter the breast milk from the blood, thus affecting the baby's nervous system development.

During breastfeeding, mothers should pay attention to observe whether some foods may cause discomfort to the baby. If they find that the baby has abnormalities in feeding, bowel movements, sleep, etc., they may consider avoiding eating certain foods that have been recently changed to see if there is any improvement.