I tried in vain to locate a post I had written a while back on a 
BF/formula debate board, but alas, my search was in vain.  The topic was 
an article about a woman who was charged with murdering her child, the 
weapon being her alcohol-laden breastmilk and the means being alcohol 
poisoning.

I did a series of calculations to determine how much breastmilk the baby 
would have needed to ingest to get enough alcohol to be lethal.  I 
obviously had to make a number of assumptions, including the blood 
alcohol level of the mom (high enough for her to be drunk, but not so 
high that she would be comatose and thus unable to breastfeed), the size 
of the child, the lethal blood alcohol level of the child and how much 
alcohol it would take to reach this level.

In any case, the net result of my calculations was that in order for the 
baby to get enough alcohol via the breastmilk to raise his/her blood 
alcohol to lethal levels, s/he would have to consume, in a relatively 
short period of time, 156 oz of breastmilk (or thereabouts - I know it 
was over 150 oz).  In other words, over the space of a few hours, the 
baby would have to consume about *6 days* worth of breastmilk (avg 
intake 25 oz/day).

Obviously, some of my assumptions could be somewhat off, but likely not 
enough to make this story (lethal alcohol poisoning via breastmilk) 
remotely plausible.

Now, I didn't go through all of this to prove that drinking and 
breastfeeding was *100% perfectly safe* but that it was highly unlikely 
to be lethal - but that's not  a very high bar to aspire to ;)

My actual goal in the exercise was to show that the baby most likely 
died because of a *parenting while drunk* issue, and NOT a 
*breastfeeding while drunk* issue.  For example, I argued that a mom 
that impaired could fill a bottle with vodka and feed it to baby (or for 
that matter, mix formula with vodka and feed it to baby ... would anyone 
argue that the baby died b/c it was given formula?  I don't think so.)

Spencer, MD and newly minted Breastfeeding USA BC; BFing mom who has 
been known to have a drink on occasion :)

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and have a healthy, happy start to 2012!!

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        E. Spencer Joslin, MD
        [log in to unmask]
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