Friday night. As if we were posing for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, we cozied up next to a roaring fire while a gentle snow fell on our fair city, and proceeded to tie one on. Naturally, I thought this would make for a lovely blog post.
The boozing part. Not the gentle snow by a cozy fire part. Duh.
I broke out one of my coveted Dogfish Heads, a new mom gift from this guy. (Last year, DFH rudely pulled out of Indiana, much like your college boyfriend with the backwards hat and tribal armband pulled out and came all over your lower back tattoo.)
It occurred to me that drinking a beer is a hell of a lot more complicated than it used to be. Whereas once, I could just crack one open any time, day or night, now partaking of the good shit requires a little more foresight. But it’s worth it. And if you found this blog because you’re pregnant or someday plan to become pregnant, this is the most important blog post you will ever read. For everyone else: send me hatemail about how my blog sucks now.
Tips for safe boozing when you have a cuddly baby friend…
- Plan ahead and store some milk. I have enough milk stored in my freezer to go on a two-day bender, give or take. (I also use this approach with my morning coffee!)
- Benders are fun, but you might want to just start with one drink until you get the hang of it. If you have just one, your delicious milk is pretty much good to go after a couple-three hours. Two drinks, you’re looking at six hours. (And if you’re a fatty fat fat like me, it could take upward of eight hours.) Also keep in mind “one drink” does not mean any one drink. If you’re drinking a 12% ABV Palo Santo Marron, allow extra time accordingly.
- At some point along your excellent journey of motherhood, you will hear the expression “pump and dump.” But it’s not as simple as just drinking your booze and then promptly pumping out the “contaminated” milk and dumping it. Since the alcohol isn’t stored in your milk, you could pump too early and the alcohol would still be making its way through your system. Or you could pump too late and throw out perfectly good milk. Really, you just need to wait until the booze has run it’s course. Pumping and dumping is only necessary to hold off that nasty engorgement troll that comes out every four hours or so.
- Fail-safe: the alcohol test strip. My husband talked me out of adding these to our gift registry but I still think they are a brilliant idea.
- Beware the cluster feed. Just when you think it’s safe to get tanked, your baby is going to have a growth spurt and demand to be fed every 45 minutes, and there goes your night.
- Contrary to popular belief, there’s no hard evidence that beer stimulates lactation. (What does stimulate lactation is being at the grocery store in a light-colored shirt. Apparently.) But, I personally can offer anecdotal evidence that beer makes moms happy and happy moms make more milk.
- Use the buddy system. Friday, my husband was the DP, or Designated Parent. For the first few months of your child’s life, probably at least one of you should be sober at all times. When your kid can hold her head up by herself, she’s on her own.
We're not there yet.
Note: I didn’t source any of this shit because I don’t care if you think I’m credible or not. This isn’t that kind of blog. But if you must know, I got a lot of information from the American Academy of Pediatrics New Mother’s Guide to Breastfeeding, as well as some tidbits from BabyCenter.com. Also, I made a lot of it up.
