Thefrisky.com—a site devoted to female troubles and powered by raw estrogen—recently polled their audience and found that 48.6 percent of women would drink while pregnant. The poll didn’t mention whether these pregnant women would drink in public or not—just that more women are open to the idea of drinking while pregnant.
I have never been pregnant, but if you’ve got a built-in drinking buddy, it sounds pretty rad. But here’s the thing: all the pregnant ladies I know say that if you’re pregnant and you drink in public, you get nervous, pitying looks from people—as if you are actively killing your fetus’s one brain cell.
“The only way to enjoy yourself is to drink alone, in the bathroom, like your alcoholic uncle does,” one pregnant friend told me. Now I’m feeling confused and judgmental. Maybe my friends are hysterical and paranoid that society is judging them. Maybe society is judging them. Maybe my friends are pregnant alcoholics.
Help me out. Is it now socially acceptable for pregnant ladies to drink?
How did this all work out before the 20th century? Not to be a smartass, as I’m genuinely curious and I have no idea: where were the armies of disabled children over the years?
I’m sorry, did I miss some study saying it was actually okay to drink when you’re pregnant?
Sure, drinking while preg passes on drink to the fetus who’s got a lot less body mass to diffuse that poison. But *A* drink, now and then, isn’t gonna do any harm.
Whatever, DWPers. Your body, your choice.
There’s a difference between “would drink” and “do drink” while pregnant. One makes you sound indifferent and cool, one makes you a social pariah.
@1: institutionalized.
Personally, I would avoid drinking during the first, maybe second trimester. Third trimester, maybe limited to a small glass of something once in a while. Unfortunately this is the hugely pregnant stage and I’d feel pretty self-conscious. Personally I’d rather deal with physical than mental disability in a child, and brain formation happens early on.
But I think it’s something where each person decides acceptable risk, though unfortunately there’s not a lot of available info on what those risks are. I think I read that FAS happens when people drink more than 8 drinks a week, which seems like a lot to me but doesn’t factor in how the drinking is spread out.
Why not smoke some crack while you’re at it?
People would sure look at my wife funny when she was pregnant and came into the liquor store with me. People really feel entitled to protect other folk’s fetuses. Now that little baby Beelzebub is here, though, people REALLY freak out when wifey is nursing the kid and nursing a whiskey at the same time. Ha! Just toughening up his liver a little, folks!
“built-in drinking buddy”
Now that’s funny!
5 years ago (which is when I stopped associating with pregnant people), I can say that among Seattle’s latte liberal crowd it was OK, even cool, for a pregnant woman to enjoy a glass of wine, although the vast majority of women abstained. Two glasses of wine would raise eyebrows. Any more would be scandalous.
Some of the “men” also abstained in solidarity with their wives. I was not one of them.
My mom’s doctor told her it was OK to have a beer once in a while to deal with pregnancy-related stress while she carried me, which he felt was potentially more detrimental than a little alcohol. I turned out perfectly potato.
Joe, you are a fucking idiot. Apparently, a fucking idiot that doesn’t know how to use Google. Where were the armies of disable children over the years?” Look it up. They were called retards. Don’t worry, those good soldiers were treated super-de-dooper in all of those centuries before the 20th.
Cienna, good writer, also a fucking idiot. This is not something to make light of, even if your dipshit friends think that it is.
Spend a day with a child that has Fetal Alchol Syndrome. Or, spend a day with a child that doesn’t have the full blown syndrome, but does have permanent brain damage because their mother drank. Watch them struggle to learn how to read — at age nine or ten. It wouldn’t be to hard for you to find them. FAS was first discovered at the University of Washington, and the world’s premier FAS clinic is still there. Do you know anything at all about FAS. Do some research on how many days during a fetus’ development there are during which alcohol can result in the “face of FAS.” Then get on here and make fun drinking while pregnant.
Drinking while pregnant is about as funny as injecting a little bit of HIV into a fetus to see if they will develop immunity.
For fucks sake.
Responsible drinking is fine. But even if one drink could or would fuck your baby up forever, it’s nobody’s business but the pregnant lady’s.
Typically pregnant women who drink, don’t feel like drinking too much. My wife’s drinking has never been as moderate as when she was pregnant.
This country is also filled with ninnie nannies who like to tell other people what to do. If I were pregnant I would fill a Jack Daniels bottle with Iced tea just to Piss people of.
Humans have been ingesting alcohol for millenia, partially due to good that went bad.
The key here is moderation. You shouldn’t be going out every night and getting totally blotto, and it IS better that you don’t drink, but … cut yourself some slack if and when you do.
A lot of pregnancies are the result of women drinking, after all.
(good => food)
Depends what you mean by “drinking”. If I were pregnant, I would not stress about drinking a glass of wine once in a while. Some studies say that no amount of alcohol is safe. Show me the child suffering from FAS because his mother had one drink while pregnant, and I’ll believe it.
@2: http://www.foodeu.com/articles/Drink+Lig…
A microscopically small number of babies have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and the percentage tracks pretty well with the number of alcoholics in society. Women who regularly get falling down drunk while pregnant wind up with seriously disabled children. Moderate drinking is not harmful.
@10 Thanks for jumping up my asshole. I was asking a serious question, because this really wasn’t a Big Thing widely discussed Back In The Day that I know of. Hence why I asked. Sorry I didn’t ask in apologetic enough terms for you.
Jesus, # 10, why don’t you just start calling everybody idiots. Some points:
1. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is bad.
2. You have to drink a lot, early in the pregnancy, to put your child at risk of the syndrome.
3. People should mind their own god-damned business.
4. Your wig is on crooked.
“A study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology last year found that children whose moms had “one to two” drinks per week during pregnancy were at no more risk of cognitive deficits than those who had zero alcohol.””
But that would take all the fun out of exercising another way to attempt to control women via their bodies, which we so love to do. So, keep judging away…
Yeah, the funniest thing about drinking while pregnant is, at the state when its most damaging, a lot of women don’t know they’re pregnant.
A beer once in a while isn’t gonna kill a fetus or even damage it is kind of the bottom line though. I’d go so far as to say that probably at least a third of people had a little taste of alcohol as a fetus, just because of unplanned/unexpected pregnancy or a little bathroom beer once in a while.
@15: All right, fair enough.
FAS is something that is nearly impossible to study. Some studies have shown up to 14 drinks per week doesn’t cause any damage. You have a hard time studying the real effects because you can’t take a 10 groups of pregnant women and feed them different amounts of alcohol and see what happens to their kids. All that you can do is relies on self reported consumption rates. Even if the reported rates are accurate you can’t really control for other factors. Are women who have 20 drinks a week likely to have other diet or behavior issues that cause problems? Most likely. Are you going to be able to find a sample of heavy drinking pregnant women that have the same diet, drug use, exercise behaviors, and socio-economic status as non drinking and/or light drinking women? Unlikely.
Okay, yeah, it’s a free country, and people can do what they want.
But, really, why? Is a drink so fucking important that you can’t put it off for a few months? Do you really not care that you’re putting your fetus at risk?
So, yes, you have a right to do what you want. And I have the right to think you’re a fucking idiot for doing so.
@24,
Do you have any idea how hard it is to be pregnant? No? Then I reserve the right to think you’re a fucking judgmental idiot.
And it’s NINE months. As in three-quarters of a year.
Actually, there have been a couple studies over the last few years (dig up your own links) saying having A glass of red wine a day can be good for the baby, just like it’s good for the adult. It seems likely that the same would apply to A dark beer as studies have shown A dark beer to be good for the health of the adult.
That said, there are countless studies over the years saying that having several drinks in an evening is clearly bad for the baby.
I would say if I saw a pregnant woman drinking a glass of wine I wouldn’t think twice about it. If I saw a pregnant woman drinking her third glass of wine I’d probably go talk to her about it.
i agree that in order for it to be harmful, there has to be a fairly heavy consumption in the first trimester. many women do not find out they’re pregnant until well into the first trimester, and have been consuming as if they were not pregnant the entire time with no consequences.
the reason for the abstinence message is that there is no level that has been officially declared safe, same as with advil and time in the hot tub.
p.s. i was a perfect angel with my first baby. second baby? not so much. they’re both healthy and happy and smart.
Actually, paying attention to false problems is dangerous. People tend to only be able to put effort and energy into so many directions. For every fake risk we create, that’s energy and effort not being spent on doing something helpful. For the awareness taken to not drink when pregnant, we are taking away awareness and effort for things like making sure you have enough folic acid if you might get pregnant.
Heavy drinking during pregnancy is dangerous. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a horrible thing. But light drinking isn’t shown to be dangerous. And stress during pregnancy does affect brain development. If you’re creating stress for the mother by having her not drink in social settings, then you are increasing the eventual child’s predisposition to be stressed. And you’re taking awareness away from issues that matter.
having a drink now and then isn’t particularly important. It’s easy to go several months without a drink. But being told you can’t drink for several months is a completely different situation. Not drinking when you cannot drink is more difficult. The very act of forbidding something to yourself makes it more appealing.
And why should someone do that to themselves when there is no actual health benefit? Better to focus on getting proper nutrition, taking prenatal vitamins, avoiding stress, or any of the other things that would actually be helpful for both the mother and the eventual child.
I call BS on people who say moderate drinking is ok. Alcohol is a solvent. Period. The first 2 trimesters specifically are critical to brain development, which alcohol is beyond detrimental.
And further, it may take a lot to have the full blown syndrome, but Fetal Alcohol Effects are a lot more common then you think, and they include:
https://health.google.com/health/ref/Fet…
I have heard that a glass of wine late in the 3rd trimester is ok, but honestly people? You can’t give up drinking for 9 months to ensure your child doesn’t have developmental issues? How fucking selfish, and boy am I glad you procreated!
Sure, people can be on meth for 7 months of their pregnancy (like an old co-worker of mine, who is now clean) and their child can come out *ok* but damn, why risk it?!
@26, you’d go talk to her about it. And it’s your business how? She’d be well within her rights to toss that glass in your face.
@31, is the solvent supposed to dissolve the brain or something? That’s not how solvents, or alcohol, work. And alcohol isn’t meth.
Also, any alcohol intoxication over .7 has been shown to be bad for the baby. That means you can *maybe* have one glass.
@24: You’re normally so reasonable. I really don’t get this judgemental response.
A fetus is more at risk if its mother chooses to drive a car every day than have a glass of wine once in a while. Are pregnant women who drive also “fucking idiots” in your book?
Fnarf: Alchol acts like a solvent on the brain, in fact the sticky membranes within the brain get weakened when you drink, and cause lasting damage.
Having taken psychology classes and studied brain development (where you can see brain damage) it is pretty easy. As @10 said, UW has a premier study of FAS, and of alchohol on the adult brain. I spoke with a professor who worked on a brain study in the 80s regarding alcohol. It’s pretty staggering. If ADULTS have more than a few drinks a month, there is permenant, lasting brain damage.
Not that it stops me, but the scans and papers I have seen are pretty damning.
It scares the crap out of me when I see parents willing to expose small children and even babies to the risk of bicycling in traffic. The odds of death, dismemberment and permanent disability from that are extraordinarily high — far higher than most of the crap people wring their hands over, like the occasional drink during pregnancy.
I understand why people get scared and protective when the see a pregnant lady drinking in public. People are ignorant, simpleminded motherfuckers. They divide the world up into easy categories like “good” and “bad” with no mentally challenging degrees of difference in between.
We learned from experience the best way to drink in public if you’re showing: do it with four other big round pregnant ladies. Most of these ignoramuses are too cowardly to open their fat mouths to a whole gaggle of pregnant ladies.
lots and lots of things are “shown to be bad for the baby” but people don’t take much issue with them. over-exercising, under-eating, high stress, unpasteurized cheese, running a fever, working around chemicals, and the aforementioned hot tub.
oh! and coffee!
and Fnarf: my point was there are lots of drugs (alcohol being a drug) that you can take and your baby will turn out ok. But to risk your child’s development…well, that is up to the mother.
Let’s say you have a glass of wine now and then (as is suggested by commenters here) and your child has problems? Was it worth it? If you are stressed, take a yoga class or exercise both are much better for mother and child.
@17, you ask an excellent question, sir! While I do agree that expectant mothers should avoid downing the Jack Daniels, why indeed has this become “zero tolerance” in terms of the public health message? The LaLeche league used to recommend beer for nursing mothers.
I hate the argument that the public is too stupid to understand facts, so must be fed a one-size-fits-all mandate. It is patronizing to insist that all women, all the time, must avoid any alcohol while pregnant.
@31 http://parentingsquad.com/yes-you-can-dr…
Yes, alcohol is a solvent but you’re not bathing the kid in it. You’re having a glass of wine which your liver processes in about an hour. No harm will come to the kid.
@32, yes she might thrown the drink in my face, so? No, it’s not my business but it is my responsibility the same as it’s my responsibility to step in if I see a parent beating the shit out of their kid or a man beating the shit out of his wife. Doing the right thing doesn’t always involve limiting yourself to what’s “your business”.
@33 (I know, same person as 31) one glass is what I’ve been suggesting. Out of curiosity, where has it “been shown”?
@40
Dude! Have you been watching fox news for the last several years? The public is clearly too stupid to understand facts.
@root: In a text book when I was studying abnormal psychology. It’s not readily online, so I can’t point you to a link. and some commenters said “just less than 3” which means more than 1.
That second glass can have negative effects.
In general, people can do what they want. But downplaying the effects doesn’t help anyone. Just in the way more women need to have folic acid not only while pregnant, but before they get pregnant (which can’t happen when people don’t plan on being pregnant)
But I digress. Sure, one glass in the 3rd trimester is probably ok, but honestly I wouldn’t touch anything during the first 2.
Maybe I’m being judgmental.
But I just don’t get it. I like to drink. I like to smoke pot occasionally. I’m not at all anti-party. But if I were a woman, and pregnant, I would gladly give it up for 9 months, just to be sure I’m not fucking up my baby.
Why risk it? I don’t understand.
In spite of what some people are saying (e.g., my baby/babies turned out OK, others did too, I know for certain that I am just fine, no one has the right to say, some studies say red wine and dark beer – how convenient – are OK, moderation is better than the unrealistic goal of abstinence), FAS/FAE is just not well enough understood to make those statements. And, Fetal Alcohol Effects are even less understood.
I would never say anything to a pregnant mom. Nor would I shoot her a dirty look. But I sure would think it.
For example, there are twins (by definition, same mom, same ingestion), where one of the twins has FAS and the other does not. Anyone care to explain that away? Guess it really is just a dice roll, huh?
Again, you want to make light of it then you should spend some time with kids that have FAS and FAE. It probably won’t happen to a fetus that is moderately exposed (very moderately), but then again you may feel differently when you see how they struggle.
@44 – I’m with you there; if I had a womb, and if it had a person in it, I wouldn’t drink. But if I want to drink–and I do–it’s nobody’s business but my own what’s going on in my abdomen, especially among the people at the bar.
@ Monique,
fair enough. We all get to make our own choices and I certainly can’t blame anyone for an overabundance of caution when it comes to their unborn child. I’d certainly rather see everyone in the house give up alcohol rather than the mother overindulge and cause the kid harm.
From what I’ve read I wouldn’t be concerned with a glass of wine or beer a day but as I’ve said I can’t blame anyone for being more cautious with their babies health.
@35, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that any brain studies in the 80s are pretty meaningless today. Water is a solvent, too, you know.
Alcohol is good for you. In particular, it’s good for your brain; those sticky substances you’re worried about dissolving are called “plaque” and they are brain damaging. Alcohol helps get rid of them. Alcohol reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease and delays its onset; it prevents stroke; and improves both memory and cognitive function.
There is evidence that children born to mothers who drink lightly are significantly less likely — 30% less likely — to have emotional and behavioral problems than those born to women who don’t drink at all. Light drinking is good for baby!
It’s also been a part of human culture for ten thousand years. Some anthropologists think alcohol is responsible for civilization itself.
@44: Because there is no proven risk to drinking very small amounts of alcohol when pregnant. A glass of wine is not going to damage your baby. If you are that concerned with such tiny, and still only potential, risks, then you’d better start getting judgemental about pregnant women who drive, who ride their bikes, who live in homes with new carpeting or upholstery, who eat junk food, etc.
I just don’t get it. I have German friends, and they would laugh this stuff off as typical American puritanical thinking. Their kids are ridiculously healthy — no candy, no processed food, no TV. Just food from the garden, almost everything homemade, lots of exercise and creative play (their mother was a Montessori kid). And their mother had the odd glass of wine when she was pregnant. She even–gasp!–let them taste wine when they were toddlers. That anyone would look down on her as a bad parent, or call her an idiot, or ask, a la @39, “Was it worth it?” …she would just shake her head and think, you people are crazy!
@44,
I like to enjoy a burger now and then. We know that large amounts of saturated fat is harmful to a fetus but the effects of small amounts of saturated fat haven’t been shown to be 100% harmless. Pregnant women should go strictly vegan or they don’t care about their baby.
I live in the city. We know that large amounts of carbon monoxide and other pollutants are bad for developing fetuses but the effects of small amounts have not been shown to be 100% harmless so pregnant women should all move out to the farm until they give birth. If they don’t they’re choosing to fuck up their baby.
I could go on if you like but I hope you get the point. Virtually everything we do adds risk to our life and, if pregnant, the health of the fetus, and given the facts available we have to make an educated decision of what risks to take/inflict on the fetus.
Holy fuck. Did that “professor” get his degree from the back of a magazine?
Seriously, Monique, stop while you’re not totally behind.
@51, the paragraph should read, “if adults have more than a few drinks a month, there are permanent, lasting brain benefits”.