What Are The Risks With Caffeine And Breast Feeding?

Many new mothers have heard that caffeine and breast feeding do not mix. Is this an old wives’ tale, or is there some truth behind the idea that breast feeding and caffeine should not go together. Try to take the morning cup of coffee away from a new mom who got no sleep the night before, and you will understand why some moms are not willing to give up their caffeine no matter if they are breast feeding or not. Sometimes that morning cup of coffee is the only thing that can get the sleep-deprived mom out of bed!

How Much Caffeine Is OK?

The best rule of thumb when it comes to caffeine and breast feeding is believed to be that a mom is safe with no more than 750 millilitres of caffeine a day. This is about five small cups of coffee. With this amount of caffeine, neither the mother nor the baby who are nursing should experience any problems.

What Is The Big Deal?

The problem with mothers drinking caffeine and breast feeding at the same time is that new moms often only calculate the amount of caffeine in their drinks. They forget that many pain medications contain caffeine. They also forget to count the caffeine in their chocolate foods. Counting caffeine when breast feeding means that you count every singly form of caffeine that enters your body.

The problem with caffeine and breast feeding is that the caffeine does enter the mother’s milk, which means that the baby is ingesting the caffeine. If a baby receives too much caffeine it can make her fussy, overly active, and wide-eyed. What happens is that over time, the caffeine in the baby’s blood stream actually accumulates. This is why one cup of coffee does not harm the baby, but over doing it might be a problem.

Mothers should watch their babies carefully to see if there seems to be a sensitivity to caffeine. If so, then the mother should avoid drinking caffeine whenever possible, and see if the symptoms disappear. It will take up to three weeks for all of the caffeine to leave the baby’s system, so mothers should not expect overnight results. If the problems that the baby is experiencing clear up after eliminating all forms of caffeine and still breast feeding, then the mom has found the problem.

There have been no studies that show that there are long term risks with breast feeding and caffeine consumption, so that is encouraging. The problems are temporary, and if the baby seems to be fine, then a mom can rest assured that she is not consuming too much caffeine.