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Home › Articles › Breastfeeding Basics › Breastfeeding Do's and Don'ts

Breastfeeding Do's and Don'ts

What Can and Can't You Do While Breastfeeding?

By Jenn Director Knudsen

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Carolyn Stanley, 37, of Portland, Ore., parrots many breastfeeding moms when she says, "As a nursing mother, you want to give your baby the best of everything." Yet she – and so many nursing moms like her – often wonders whether she's hurting the quality of her breast milk with certain things she ingests or is exposed to. And she finds that a lot of expert advice is contradictory. "You get these conflicting reports," says Stanley, mother of two sons, Luke, 3 1/2, and John, 7 months.

Is it OK to drink alcohol while nursing? Quaff coffee? Get a dental or chest X-ray? Go through airport security? Have your eyes dilated? Ingest cold medication? Get your clothes dry cleaned? Take painkillers? And what about antibiotics? These are just a few of the many questions nursing moms ask of their internists, kids' pediatricians, nutritionists, dieticians and lactation specialists. Here, breastfeeding mothers and experts sound off on these and other issues. Listed here, too, are resources for you to check out on your own, should the "answers" below still seem as murky as the color of Mothers' milk.

Alcohol
Stanley wanted to enjoy some wine while nursing her sons and so consulted a dietician about how much would be all right. None was the answer. "It can be damaging to the baby's brain development," Stanley recalls her dietician telling her.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also counsels breastfeeding mothers to drink no alcohol. "We disagree," says Katy Lebbing, BS, IBCLC, RLC, manager of the Center for Breastfeeding Information and a member of the Education and Member Services Department of La Leche League International

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