Alcohol to Increase Milk Production?

Since I started breastfeeding, I've become an avid reader of breastfeeding discussion boards, sites like kellymom.com, journal articles, news publications and books like "The Nursing Mother's Companion."

One of the bits of wisdom I've heard imparted to nursing moms from Lactation consultants and these sources are to drink a glass of alcohol (typically beer) to produce and maintain an adequate milk production.

However, a study from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (April 2005 publication) found that alcohol consumption did NOT increase milk production.

A summary of the study states:

Oxytocin levels for each woman fell a striking 78 percent during the session where she had the alcohol. The women also reported feeling more tired and less happy on those days. Prolactin levels, on the other hand, surged by 336 percent during the alcohol session. The two hormones that normally move together in the nursing dance, went spinning in opposite directions after a drink. The result? Women produced less milk (volume and calories). But high prolactin levels lead to an increased sensation of breast fullness, so mothers feel like they are making more milk even though they are making less. Babies suck more vigorously at the beginning of nursing after their mother has had a drink, leading many mothers to think that babies are drinking more. Probably they are sucking harder because they are getting less. Breastfed babies drink an average of 20 percent less milk after their mother has had alcohol.

A glass of alcohol does make mom sleepier and make her breasts feel fuller. This could be the explanation for the generations of folk wisdom. Because moms couldn't measure how much milk their babies were drinking, there was nothing to contradict this advice.

The word is still out on non-alcoholic beer and brewer's yeast as many mothers have reported increased milk production after using these products.

I find it interesting that the study showed alcohol's effects to be contradictory: the breasts felt fuller leading mothers to think that more milk was being produced, while in truth the opposite was true.

Home Birth Safer Than Hospital Birth?

This new study hesitates to say that home birth is actually safer than hospital birth (for low risk pregnancies, which most pregnancies are). But the findings can be interpretted that giving birth at home is safer than giving birth in a hospital.

It depends how one wants to define "safety." Is safety the outcome that mom and baby come out alive? Or is safety the outcome that mom and baby are alive and unharmed?

Is a mother unharmed when she leaves the hospital with sutures from an episiotomy, or a healing C-section incision? Is she unharmed when she experiences spinal headaches for weeks, months or even years after giving birth? Is a baby unharmed when he has injured neck muscles from being pulled out by forceps, or when he has a scab from the internal fetal monitor gouged into his scalp or an accidental nick from a surgeon's scalpel?

For moms birthing babies at home, these injuries aren't even possible because there has been no epidural or internal monitorring or abdominal surgery. She's 32% less likely to have an episiotomy showing that midwives are not as cut happy as the hospital birth attendants.

As for mortality rates, the study showed that the rates were very similar between home births and hospital births (1.7% or 14 in 5,418 babies). It important to note that the percentage of fetal or neonatal deaths was comparable to deaths of babies in the hospital, showing that location of birth doesn't make a difference in those cases.

An interesting note was the researchers explanation of the mortality rate in the study. They said, "Although the crude mortality for low risk babies weighing over 2500 g intended at home was 2.4 per 1000 and intended in hospital was 1.9 per 1000, when standard methods were employed to adjust for differences in risk profiles of the two groups (indirect standardisation and logistic regression), both methods showed slightly lower risk for intended home births."

To explain the technical mumbo jumbo, they were comparing results of other studies investigating infant mortality rates in home births and hospital births. They had to use some statistical analysis to fairly compare the studies and in their comparisons, they found slightly lower risk for intended home births. Suggesting that home birth is actually safer for babies too, than hospital birth.