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" A friend told me that you are in favor of new moms drinking. Can this be true?! \u2013janet p. This is true \u2013 and not true. &amp;quot;Drinking&amp;quot; is one of those words laden with multiple meanings. Let&amp;#039;s look at them:  There&amp;#039;s drinking as in, &amp;quot;drinking water and other wholesome liquids.&amp;quot; Yes, a mom should do this, everyone on the planet should do this, and every single day! Then there&amp;#039;s drinking in the sense of having an alcoholic beverage every now and again. If your religion and health don&amp;#039;t frown on it. I&amp;#039;m not going to, either.  There&amp;#039;s also, however, drinking as in &amp;quot;drinking problem&amp;quot; \u2013 defined by me as needing to have a drink every single day, or drinking to drunk more than once in a blue moon (or,say, on your anniversary at a faraway beach location sans kids or cars), or drinking in secret so that nobody knows until you&amp;#039;ve sped the wrong way down the highway and killed yourself, your kids, your brother&amp;#039;s kids, and perfect strangers who were in the right place at the wrong time. Needless to say I am not in favor of problem-drinking drinking.  Here&amp;#039;s how your friend might have misunderstood: I contributed to a new book on breastfeeding called Unbuttoned: Women Open Up About the Pleasures, Pains, and Politics of Breastfeeding, an excerpt from which wound up on CNN.com. My contribution is about \u2013 what else? \u2013 laid back breastfeeding. In it I make the case that what&amp;#039;s important is that you try breastfeeding before you reject the idea out of hand. (Think of it as an extension of pregnancy and childbirth, your body was made to do it.) And from there, you do what works, whether it&amp;#039;s supplementing with formula or quitting early or perservering into toddlerhood. The chapter ends with my drinking a beer, the gift of a friend who&amp;#039;d been told by her pediatrician&amp;#039;s wife that it was &amp;quot;good for the let-down reflex&amp;quot;). (Yes drinking said a beer while breastfeeding a newborn, but no, not simultaneously. And just one, which I didn&amp;#039;t even finish.) That&amp;#039;s drinking, but only in one benign sense of the word. And although I did receive a few emails calling me a &amp;quot;horrible&amp;quot; mother (direct quote), both for the beer-sipping and the formula supplementing, the relieved thank yous outnumbered these about 10 to 1. Seems there are some things everybody does but nobody wants to talk about. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a42501/how-much-should-a-new-mom-drink-4311/>