BBC: 'Any alcohol' a risk in pregnancy

[krkaufman]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3651050.stm

There is no safe amount of alcohol that mothers-to-be can drink, experts believe.

Even the small amount advised by the government can harm the unborn child, a UK conference on foetal alcohol syndrome heard this week.

[OKNancy]

1. Not that I don't take this seriously, but

These warnings have been out..what 25-30 years?
Are there a bunch of fetal alcohol syndrome people running around who were born before then? I am a baby boomer who grew up in the 1950's -60's in suburban America. I don't recall any of my contemporaries with f.a.s. and I know for a fact lots of those mommies were drinking their cocktails. Maybe pregnant women back then figured it out or women just didn't drink as much.
I've always wonder about this question.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. I don't think they knew much about fetal alcohol syndrome then

but that doesn't mean that it didn't exist.

I use to work in a High Risk Clinic. HEAVY drinking causes FAS. You do not get FAS from an 'occasional' glass of anything.

Along with the alcoholism, poor nutrition and no medical care during pregnancy are also contributing factors. Probably, your suburban moms were better feed and under a doctor's care for the pregnancy.

[Warpy]

7. Right on FAS

Heavy drinking doesn't even guarantee it, but it never occurs in the absence of heavy drinking.

Drinking moms in the 50s were limited by being utterly dependent on husbands for a household allowance. The ultra heavy drinking usually didn't start until the kiddies had been born and were around to damage in other ways.

I think this study is focusing on alcohol's effect on the developing central nervous system, and I think it's highly speculative, test tube stuff. Maternal drinking possibly cost some of us a few IQ points if it was a daily thing. It's one of those things that's best to avoid if you want to produce the healthiest kid possible, along with smoking.

It's also one of those things that does no discernable damage with rare use.

[sybylla]

19. Agreed

I know my mom didn't stop drinking when she was pregnant with me in the early 60's and neither did most women in her generation. I'm not seeing any serious deleterious effects on the population as a whole.

While I respect the need to protect fetuses from undue risk, I have yet to see any serious evidence that rare to occasional drinking during pregnancy will have any serious long term effects on the child.

In this study, they still call it a risk, not a sure thing.

[Redbear]

14. This new study doesn't deal with FAS, but FASD, which is milder.

FASD can cause learning disabilities or behavioral problems in otherwise normal kids.

[DoYouEverWonder]

24. Lord Mitchell said that he blamed binge drinking

for the high rates of damage.

Binge drinking, while pregnant or not, is a lot different than the one or two drinks per week.

Someone who would binge drink more than once, has a serious drinking problem.

[Must_B_Free]

2. Sounds like bullshit to me!

Don't get shitfaced, gals, but nothing wrong with a glass of wine.

[AspenRose]

12. That's what my doctor told me.

An occasional glass of wine was fine.

[Ravenseye]

13. That's BS Advice...

OB/GYN are the biggest play it safe doctors around.

They tell women it's ok to have a glass of wine now and then, becuase they can't tell women to not drink at all.

Mostly it's about a balance of risks. They don't tell the woman..."Well if you're really stressed out and a glass of wine can help then have one. Basically you're balancing risk factors. If you can't relax without the wine, then your risks are going to increase because of your stress, but you'll replace that with risks because you're introducing alchohol to your unborn child. In all by doing so you're minimizing your risks, but you're still increasing one aspect...just decreasing another one by much more."

Maybe you're ok with increasing the risks to your unborn child by a half a percent so you can have a glass of wine at your friends wedding, but my wife and I aren't. We play the numbers and as far as we're concerned, even an increase in dnager of one in ten thousand to our baby is not worth any convienience to ourselves.

I know we're in the minority these days, but thats just what we think.

[Generator]

22. Ah yes but the hypocrisy

of the medical establishment is this: It's not safe to drink. But it's also an absolute proven that there is a miscarriage risk if you have an amnio or a CVS procedure which many women have because their doctor recommends it.

In other words, because the medical establishment has these procedures, it's okay. These proceducers have a chance of certain death for the fetus. I don't see that with a glass of wine. I would like to see proof that a woman had minimal to moderate drinking and the fetus DIED. That doesn't exist. It does with the medical procedures that doctors will do without a second thought. Yes, they will tell you that these procedures have a tiny risk, but that risk is absolute. It's the termination of the pregnancy.

Which seems safer a drink at your friend's wedding or a needle in your womb?

I bet the fetus would take the drink. I also bet the fetus would prefer the drink because the only reason for these tests is to find "abnormalities" which then leads to, yep, termination.

By the way I'm pro-choice. I just find the medical profession suspect with their definition of risk.

Also, I don't know where you live, but here in the West Coast of America, they never told me a drink was acceptable. All drinking was considered unacceptable.

Europe must have a rash of FAS babies, because you know how they drink. Here in America, common sense is gone. Moderation is gone. For Christ sake, at my kid's school they don't even allow bakesales anymore.

Because as we know in America, if you protect yourself enough, you never die. Maybe if we have a law or something to insure that we always did what we were told. It would be so much easier that way.

[AspenRose]

23. Um, I'm just reporting what my doctor said

"Maybe you're ok with increasing the risks to your unborn child by a half a percent so you can have a glass of wine at your friends wedding, but my wife and I aren't. We play the numbers and as far as we're concerned, even an increase in dnager of one in ten thousand to our baby is not worth any convienience to ourselves."

Actually, I'm not, and I haven't been drinking, thanks for assuming otherwise.

Geez.

[bleedingheart]

3. Tell that to the women in the past who drank meade and wine

and yet produced healthy children that created great works of art and made discoveries in mathematics...

[Mizmoon]

5. I know lots of moms who smoked too

before the warnings. By the logic I see here, that's a load too. I have never met anyone who was damaged because their mother smoked while pregnant.

Personally, I can't imagine how anyone drinks while pregnant. Even the smell of alcohol would make me heave when I was preggers.

[goddess40]

6. Why tempt disaster - if you can't go 9 months w/o a drink

you have bigger problems to deal with.

By the way my mom thinks * looks like a FAS person, does anyone know if Bab's was or is a drinker?

[Warpy]

8. Nah, he doesn't have FAS

There are facial characteristics he lacks, so Babs's drinking didn't do it. I do question her parenting skills, though, considering what a crooked bunch she spawned.

Try Wernicke-Korsakoff for Bush's problem.

[OKNancy]

9. Yes I agree

but I think a little wine or even a cig in most cases won't hurt anyone. If I were pregnant, I wouldn't drink, but if I saw someone else drink a glass of wine, I wouldn't freak out.

[Carni]

10. The 60's and 70's

I don't want to claim that fetal alcohol syndrome is made up but I think that it's ill effects regarding light or social drinking amongst pregnant women may be hyped.

When I was a kid all my friend's mothers drank, smoked, took aspirin and whatever else they wanted to while they were pregnant and I didn't know anyone with fetal alcohol syndrome.

How were they all so lucky?

[mimitabby]

15. geez you guys

it's statistics!
I tossed a penny 4 times and it came up heads 4 times. I guess that means I can only get the penny to land heads up.
When I was pg I did everything I knew of to protect the kid i was carrying. I sure as heck wouldn't drink or smoke then, all that crap goes right into the bloodstream which the baby shares.
I'm glad you guys don't know anyone with FAS or who was "damaged"
by having a mom smoke. There are a lot of things associated with tobacco use during pregnancy including miscarriages
,low birth weight babies, and increased rates of sudden infant death syndrome.
I do know 2 adult women with "mild" FAS. They are both raising their own children now, but things that came easy to me did not come easy to them. their mother was a "hippie" child, lots of sex, booze and drugs.
Not good for babies. really guys.

[Carni]

16. Really? No shit...ya think?

I simply made an observation that in the 60's and 70's my generations parents didn't live like the freaking boy in a bubble and most of us managed to come out OK...

Lots of "booze sex and drugs" during pregnancy is not what I was talking about, I was referring to OCCASIONAL LIGHT SOCIAL DRINKING and the consumption of things like tylenol, coffee, or other over the counter drugs during pregnancy.

Maybe you should have counseled your hippy chick friend instead of telling us all what a perfect "mommy" you are.

[mimitabby]

18. my hippie chick friend

she's my sister in law and had done all her partying before i met her.
I didn't say I was a perfect mommy. I said that most moms do all they can to protect their babies.
Skipping that glass of wine is no great sacrifice, as the one woman said, she couldn't even stand the smell of the stuff while she was pg.
We have enough problems with crap in the air, crap in the water that might influence the child
to not add to it by being insensitive.

[AngryAmish]

11. My mom quit smoking for my older sisters but not for me

Look how I turned out. Oh, wait, I guess that would be a reason to quit smoking.

Women generally do not know they are pregnant for some time after it happens. This is when critical early development goes on. Yet most kids are ok.

What was the old joke, if alcohol did not exist no woman would get pregnant?

[Carni]

17. No shit

And if the "Christian" CONservatives had their way no woman of child bearing age would drink in general...

It's all political bullshit.

[maxsolomon]

20. any 'breathing' or 'moving' also a risk

pregnant women, only staying on the couch watching the tube till your flesh merges with the cushions eliminates risk!

[sffreeways]

21. Drinking while pregnant

isn't a great idea. I couldn't even stand the smell of it either.

I sure know a hell of a lot of folks that have obvious characteristics of fas.

Anyhow, when you do some reading on the subject it makes you cringe.

Possible FAS Symptoms:


Growth deficiencies: small body size and weight, slower than normal development and failure to catch up.
Skeletal deformities: deformed ribs and sternum; curved spine; hip dislocations; bent, fused, webbed, or missing fingers or toes; limited movement of joints; small head.
Facial abnormalities: small eye openings; skin webbing between eyes and base of nose; drooping eyelids; nearsightedness; failure of eyes to move in same direction; short upturned nose; sunken nasal bridge; flat or absent groove between nose and upper lip; thin upper lip; opening in roof of mouth; small jaw; low-set or poorly formed ears.
Organ deformities: heart defects; heart murmurs; genital malformations; kidney and urinary defects.
Central nervous system handicaps: small brain; faulty arrangement of brain cells and connective tissue; mental retardation -- usually mild to moderate but occasionally severe; learning disabilities; short attention span; irritability in infancy; hyperactivity in childhood; poor body, hand, and finger coordination.
Size of the Problem: The incidence (number of new cases each year) of FAS and FAE are significantly under-reported. Therefore, projections are usually based on estimates of their occurrence per 1,000 live births. Recent studies by researchers Ernest Abel and Robert Sokol suggest that the incidence of FAS can conservatively be estimated at 0.33 cases per 1,000 live births. Missouri recorded 78,468 live births in 1991 and 76,005 in 1992, which would yield at least 25 new cases of FAS per year. The incidence of FAE is generally regarded to be several times the magnitude of FAS cases, perhaps in the hundreds in Missouri.
Recommendations: Studies suggest that drinking a large amount of alcohol at any one time may be more dangerous to the fetus than drinking small amounts more frequently. The fetus is most vulnerable to various types of injuries depending on the stage of development in which alcohol is encountered. A safe amount of drinking during pregnancy has not been determined, and all major authorities agree that women should not drink at all during pregnancy. Unfortunately, women sometimes wait until a pregnancy is confirmed before they stop drinking. By then, the embryo/fetus has gone through several weeks of critical development, a period during which exposure to alcohol can be very damaging. Therefore, the Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse urges women who are pregnant or anticipating a pregnancy to abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages.

Sources: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
Missouri Department of Health, State Center for Health Statistics
Abel, Ernest; and Sokol, Robert. A revised conservative estimate of the incidence of FAS and its economic impact. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 15(3), 1992.
Food and Drug Administration
National Council on Alcoholism
United States Surgeon General
United States Department of Health and Human Services

http://www.well.com/user/woa/fsfas.htm

[Sideways]

25. I Drank Red Wine During ALL Of My Pregnancies

I have four children ALL of them gifted. Two are on scholarships, one at CAL the other at Georgetown. The oldest is a gifted carpenter. The youngest is a three year old on a learning curve of a six year old.

I live in Italy now precisely because I can not stand the bullshit media. Fuck Bush and let us move on. It is not the alcohol it is the smarts of the mommy that determine the child's development.