Regulation of milk intake after exposure to alcohol in mothers' milk

Objective: Contrary to the folklore which claims that drinking alcohol duri ng lactation benefits both mother and infant, previous research in our labo ratory revealed that breastfed infants consumed significantly less milk dur ing the immediate hours after their mothers' consumption of an alcoholic be verage. Because breastfed infants are clearly capable of regulating milk in take, the present study tested the hypothesis that infants would compensate for the diminished milk intake if their mothers then refrained from drinki ng alcohol. Methods: A within-subjects design that controlled for time of day was imple mented because of the great individual and daily variation in both milk com position and intake. To this end, 12 exclusively breastfed infants and thei r mothers were tested on 2 days separated by I week. Each woman drank a 0.3 g/kg dose of alcohol in orange juice on one testing day and orange juice a lone on the other, the order was counterbalanced. The infants' behaviors we re monitored for the next 16 hr, the first 4 hr of monitoring on each test day occurred at the Monell Center. The infants fed an demand and immediatel y before and after each feeding, infants were weighed without a change in c lothing. Results: Consistent with previous findings, infants consumed significantly less milk during the 4 hr immediately after exposure to alcohol in mothers' milk compared with the control condition. Compensatory increases in intake were then observed during the 8 to 16 hr after exposure when mothers refra ined from drinking alcohol. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that short-term exposure to small a mounts of alcohol in mothers' milk produces distinctive changes in the infa nts' patterns of feeding.