>The article can be found at:
>www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/101/5/e2

Susan, thank you for giving us the site to read the study on alcohol in EBM.

As usual, the media chose to take researchers' work to support their
position against breastfeeding.  Nowhere in their study or conclusions do
they recommend that women who drink alcohol not breastfeed their babies.

In my post criticizing this study, I asked:
>Don't they know about the reabsorption of alcohol from the breast after a
given >time?

Clearly the researchers do know about that reabsorption after 1 hour, which
is why they chose the peak levels that they assumed the milk would have at
1 hour.

>Don't they know that alcohol consumed along with a meal, as is done
throughout the >world, affects the blood alcohol level, so that it would
*not* be the same as >pouring straight alcohol into breastmilk?

I still maintain that the amount of alcohol in a given mother's milk at the
1 hour mark would be quite variable.  They chose an average. I think that
it would have been a more accurate measure if they had had the babies feed
at the breast.  I know that they said that they used expressed milk to
control for quantity of intake, but such procedures are always used in
studying breastmilk because of known variables. But the procedure itself
makes a study be of questionable validity.

If breastfeeding is going to be studied it should be done at the breast.
Breastmilk feeding and breastfeeding are just not the same experience, nor
is the effect the same.

For example, if a mother put her infant to breast 1 hour after drinking
alcohol, the baby would likely take less volume than she would if there
were no alcohol in the milk. The usual relaxing experience of breastfeeding
would be "enhanced" by the alcohol and baby would be off to sleep in no
time, later to feed at a breast in which the alcohol was gone.

So, I apologize for pouncing on the researchers for conclusions that they
didn't make.  I'm sure it must be most distressing for researchers to have
the base of their work ignored, while erroneous conclusions are broadcast
in newspapers and on television.

Patricia Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee

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