Dear Fellow Lactnetters,

I read with interest your comments about our recent paper in
Pediatrics and wanted to clarify several points.

This research study builds upon previous work in our laboratory that
had studied the infants' response at the breast following maternal
alcohol consumption.  As you may know, there is a rich folklore that
nursing women should drink alcohol to make a better milk, facilitate
let down or to 'make their babies sleep better.'   If I recall
there were several posts within the past week claiming the
virtues of beer - There is NO research that supports any of
these claims.  Yes, there was one study that showed that alcohol
stimulated prolactin release but the subjects in these studies
were men and non-lactating women.  Of the 250 nursing women who we
surveyed, more that 30% claimed they were given this type of advice
and encouraged to drink by a health professional - doctor, nurse,
midwive, lactation consultant.

Now back to the research.  When we looked at the infants' behavior at
the breast, we found that mothers reported differences in their
babies' sleeping behavior (NEJM, 1991).  So this study objectively
measured sleep and activity measures after exposure to alcohol in
mother's milk.  The reason we fed the babies their mother's milk from
a bottle is because we wanted to limit the exposure to one feed.

What we found was similar to what our mothers in the NEJM paper told
us.  There were alterations in the infant's sleep paper.  Now just
because you get a decrease in REM or changes in sleep doesn't mean
it's BAD - you can get changes in sleep by channging the infant's
sleeping position.  What we hypothesized is that infants compensate
for these changes in the next few hours or day.  This is a hypothesis
- we don't know the answer yet, however.

There is only one long-term study on the effects of alcohol
exposure. (Little, NEJM).  Ruth Little and colleagues showed that
infants of  nursing women who drink one alcoholic beverage or more
are at risk for a slight motor impairment at one year.  Infants of
nursing women who drink less than this are NO different in terms of
motor development than infants of nursing women who don't drink at
all.  Our new findings might shed light on these results.  Perhaps
with continued exposure to alcohol, infants can't compensate for
these deficits in sleep (refer to paper) which have been shown to be
correlated with later motor development. Mothers are getting a lot of
mixed messages.  They are often told or read articles in
the popular press to have a drink a day to prevent against heart
disease.  I think it's important for her to know about the research
described above.

The goal of our research is to tease away at this foklore so that we
may give mothers and health professionals some of the answers.  If
someone who is nursing is told to drink to help her baby sleep, she
can now refer to the research, albeit limited, to make her own
choices.  (Please refer to last paragraph of the manuscript.)

The most frustrating part of this work is when the research gets
translated into something that is against breastfeeding or when
someone criticizes the moms in our studies who are an incredible
group of women with some of the msot beautiful babies I've ever seen.

Sincerely,
Julie Mennella


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Julie Mennella Ph.D.
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