I couldn't pass this one up.  To get Maureen's approval in advance! I
will thus expand, briefly, on my brief earlier note on alcohol.

First, I agree with Maureen that a little alcohol is no problem.  The
drunk mother is not a problem because of the small amounts of alcohol
in her milk, but because she may drop the baby.  Remember that in many
jurisdictions, you are too drunk to drive if you have 0.08% alcohol in
your blood.  Well, if you have that in your blood, you have that in
your milk.  And that is about 13% of the amount of alcohol in
*de*alcoholized beer.

I find it hard to understand how so many lactation consultants are so
concerned about alcohol.  In fact, our whole society has gone nuts
about alcohol.  Tincture of blessed thistle says on it that it is not
to be taken by pregnant women or nursing mothers, apparently because
it contains a bit of alcohol (if you drank the whole bottle which I
saw yesterday down in a gulp, you would get about 3 ml or 1/10 oz of
alcohol).  How can we say to mothers:  the amount of carbemazepine in
your milk is not a worry; the amount of propylthiouracil in your milk
is not a worry.  But the tiny amount of alcohol is???!!!!  I'd take a
glass of wine over 200 mg of carbemazepine any time.

Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC