It's been a very long time since I posted on Lactnet so I should
reintroduces myself briefly. I am French , I live  in the Paris area,
I have been a LLLL for 16 years and an IBCLC for ten years. I have three
grown children and my husband is a psychiatristin a public hospital. I see
and help mothers as a LLLL and I use  qy IBCLC credits to give continuing
education to Health Profesionnals. I have also been involved several times
with UNICEF to train for BFHI in Africa

In yesterday's post  Glenn Evans writes

<.  Mom of 5 wk. old BF baby .... expects to share some champagne and maybe
some other drinks as well.
How soon after drinking is it okay to BF?  or rephrased,  how many
feedsmust she pump and dump?  >

While reading all those wonderful lactnet posts  I have sometimes reflected
to myself how
the questions  mirror our cultural background. There seems to be an
absolute taboo on drinking and
 breastfeeding in the US, here in France it is not at all seen as a
problem. After all some of you may have heard about what American
cardilogists have called the French paradox - French people have much less
cadovascular diseases than Americans- and one of the explanation was that
the consumption of one or two glasses of wine daily was a protective
factor. Why deny a breastfeeding mother the right to live a normal life. I
am talking here of a reasonable amount. If this mother intends to get
drunk, then she might want to make arrangements for somebody else to take
care of the baby, I personally would advise her to stick with the
champagne!! ( one or two glasses while she is having her meal)not other
drinks!! Am I being prejudiced here?

I have also been following the thread of the Munchausen syndrome and it
just happens that yesterday I attended a symposium at the Sorbonne in Paris
 about the psychiatric hospital units in several countries in Europe where
mothers are hospitalised with their baby . There are 38 dyad beds in France
,200 in Britain and also day hospitals. Several of those psychiatrists
mentionned that the drugs given to the mothers (neuroleptics,
antidepressants..) at normal dosage were compatible with breastfeeding
and Pr Kumar who heads one of those units in South London even said that
50% of the mothers hospitalised in his unit breastfed.   Of course in many
instances the mothers can't be left with their baby unattended as they can
get very dangerous. The mean duration of hospitalisation is 40 days, so you
can see it takes a lot of personnel but it seems to be really worth it as
in  the mental illnesses that appear after chilbirth the mothers get well
eventually and it is very important to preserve the bond between mother and
baby. If any of you would like more detail, I'll have first to go through
my notes again , but feel free to email me.

Gisele Laviolle
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