Maternity Mocha-swilling
Here's an interesting article about caffeine intake during pregnancy and breast feeding. When I was carrying with little Chad, Jr., I stopped drinking my lattes after the first trimester. But I started back the morning after he was delivered. Starbucks was closed at 3am, so my husband ordered a cappuccino from the Four Seasons concierge. It was like heaven. Anyway, now it seems that Trixies should moderate their coffee intake, even during breastfeeding:
"I can tell when Mom's had a big latte from Starbucks," she said. "The baby's heart rate goes way up."
Great news, but read on before you head out for that double mocha latte with whip.
Lawrence agrees with Berlin that the amount of caffeine that gets into breast milk is very minute, but she said small babies don't handle caffeine well. About 25 years ago, doctors began giving caffeine to infants in intensive-care units to help them "remember to breathe." They found it took the babies two weeks to clear the caffeine out of their system. The younger the baby, the longer it took to clear the caffeine.
So if a mother drinks a lot of caffeine -- three or four cups of coffee throughout a day -- that caffeine can build up in her baby, especially a young one. If the mother continues to drink coffee -- or consume anything else containing caffeine -- she is maintaining her own caffeine levels, and the baby never clears it from his or her system.
"In about six or seven days, the baby will get jittery, and we've had babies admitted to the hospital because of this extreme jitteriness," Lawrence said.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/living/6054050.htm