controlling women during pregnancy

erm yeah...although that was very restrained of you 'none of your business' would have been more appropriate.

Caffeine! He was concerned I didn't know that coke had caffeine!!

I pointed out politely that as I was at a work function out of duty and couldn't drink wine (I did in fact drink sometimes but not that night) I needed something to keep me awake!

Quite simply, the fact that I am assumed to be stupid, carelwss and danferous to my unborn child the moment I get pregnant is deeply sexist. Agree with posters pointing out that risks should be explained rather than blanket rules. Perhaps that would stop the prevalence of women not eating any fish or other silly responses to pregnancy because they have simply been told something without an explanation of why, which would allow them to apply sensible judgement.

Similarly, I fou d it deeply offensive how people felt they could comment on what I did, without any real knowledge of their own. One man actually tried to stop me drinking a single can of coke at a dinner. I could not work out which shocked me more - the fact that he thought coke was so bad or that he thought it was ok to tell me, the wife of a colleague of his, what I could or could not consume.

It's like all the other advice. It changes so often noone is sure what to believe. My dd is 7 and the weaning and bottle making advice is TOTALLY different to the advice I was given. Fair enough if it was 30 years ago, but 7! I live abroad and the alcohol advice is totally different also. It is quite acceptable to have a glass of wine with your meal

FAS is a recognised by the scientific community otherwise it wouldn't be in the International Classification of Diseases.

With younger women drinking more slowing down or stopping the increase of FAS/FASD is possibly the main concern rather than decreasing the incidence of it. The problem I think is the NHS frames recommendations in direct and and paternalistic "tones" to both men and women rather than the recommendations themselves.

The recommendations to women are to avoid drinking if you are planning to have a baby or pregnant and if they choose to drink not to drink more than 1-2 units once or twice a week. For men it recommends not drinking more than 3 or 4 units a day because it affects the quality of sperm.

My understanding is the effects of small amounts of alcohol in pregnancy are not clear, but doctors know that it does cross the placenta and think it may affect a baby's developing brain.

MrsDeVeerie: FAS with the facial issues is a real syndrome but I think it's fairly obvious that there is a massive genetic component to it. THe spectrum appears to be a case of blaming any and every sign of SN on maternal drinking rather than looking for other factors (such as maternal poverty or underfunded maternity care).

I cant agree with that.

I dont think FAS is made up bullshit at all.

Children with FAS have distinct facial dysmorphia and behavioural traits.

I know the spectrum has been widened considerably and I am not sure about that but FAS is real IMO.

FAS is a fairly dubious concept. Foetal Alcohol spectrum disorder is made-up bullshit. There is no clear direct proven causal link between the consumption of alcohol and problems with the foetus (perhaps understandably as it is not allowed for scientists to take two groups of PG women identical in every other aspect and forcefeed one lot vodka to see what happens). Raging alcoholics sometimes give birth to perfectly-OK babies. And don't forget that women who obey every single patriarchal order throughout their pregnancies, even somehow managing to obey the ones that contradict each other, might still give birth to babies with disabilities or babies that die shortly after birth.

THe bottom line is that no matter how much men want children, they can't have them without a woman's involvement. So while plenty of men are happy to find a female partner who they can fall in love with and have a family with, there are unfortunately plenty of men who think that the best way to deal with this inconvenient business of needing women to breed from is to make sure that the women get little or no say in the matter, that it's never up to them when/if to have children, and that they are never allowed to forget that being breeding stock is what they are for.
All the anti-choice activism, all the screaming about 'foetal rights', every single spurious panic about things that might be 'risky' in pregnancy, they all stem from misogyny. Patriarchist men not only hate women, they fear and mistrust them and are always insisting that unless they are owned and controlled by men, women will not give men children (or do all the hard work of raising them).

What bang said.

As said above the behaviour of alcoholics and drug addicts is determined by their addiction and being pregnant or reading a leaflet will rarely make a difference.

The recommendations given to all pregnant women are simplistic and often delivered in the autocratic paternalistic tones of a medical establishment who has a long history of not placing women's needs at it's centre. Our obstetric history is not a pleasant read in the ainart. The medical care that a pregnant woman receives often continues to fail the individual woman whose chances of a vaginal birth, vbac, breech vaginal birth, csection etc are controlled significantly by the hospital chosen. Have a prem baby and want to bf? Your choice is the units choice with individual units having a bf discharge rate of less than one percent and up to sixty percent.

No accident that older second and third time mothers have more experience and ability to articulate their needs yet still feel like it is a battle. For me the patronising leaflets set the tone for the general standard of care.

Really ? Works well?

You have just said that you work with 'the fall out', is there any evidence of decreased incidence of FAS since the recomemdations have become tighter?

The question was are pregnant women being controlled by patriachy by being given information on healthy living, well no they are not, they are being advised to act in the best interests of their unborn child.

"of course women have more control in pg matters than a man. wc or not. why on earth wouldn't they"

because their actions affect that mans child and by not taking that on board as a society, somewhat, we are doing either gender , no favours. Woman are being put in the postion of being the expected primary carer and men are discounted.

If women don't need any advice they also should be able to take responsibility, it cannot be both ways.

I personally think that the system works as well as it can, at present.

But an addict is an addict is an addict whether or not she is pregnant.

You do not turn into an irresponsibly, incapable, irrational infant when you carry a foetus. I am quite capable of weighing up risks for myself. And the 'recommendations' given to every pregnant woman is not a presentation of the actual research which will allow her to make an informed decision. It is a blanket recommendation to avoid all alcohol despite there being no evidence of harm in women who drink in moderation during pregnancy.

For all the goodwill in the world, guilt-tripping a normal woman into avoiding all risks during pregnancy is not going to stop an addict from abusing alcohol (or drugs).

That may be the case but it may not be (re crossing placenta). We have no real idea how much a child is damaged if they are conceived with damaged sperm.

Look at the children of chernobal and those affected by agent orange and other atrocieties.

My DD got luekemia. Her dad was in Gulf War one. She was born less than a year after he got back from a place where the air was poisoned by burning oil and god knows what else. The cancer rates in that part of the world are very high.

It is entirely possible that her very agressive form of cancer (which didnt respond to treatment) had something to do with it. I know he feels guilt about it. We will never know.

If a man is a problem drinker or a smack head or snorts coke everyday and impregnants 100 women with his damaged sperm - there are NO sanctions.

He can do what he likes to who he likes and he will not be arrested or even handed a leaflet by the mw or HV.

If a woman becomes pg by said charmer and her baby is born with issues related to drug and drink she will be the one who gets the entire blame.

I do not condone drinking or drug taking in pg. I have a little boy who has suffered the consquences of binge drinking and recreational drug abuse.

of course women have more control in pg matters than a man. wc or not. why on earth wouldn't they?

OK, my mistake. The figure 100 actually related to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder.

"The National Organisation on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome - UK (NOFAS - UK) reports that much of the research for western countries estimates that:
? 1 in 500 children are born with FAS
? 1 in 100 children are born with alcohol-related disorders from the spectrum (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder - FASD)
Combining these estimates with the ONS' reports of 700,000 live births in Britain each year, there are likely to be 6-7,000 babies born with FASDs of varying severity."

www.hesonline.nhs.uk/Ease/servlet/ContentServer?siteID=1937&categoryID=945

Someone mentioned sperm but my understanding is that it is alcohol crossing the placenta during the first three months of pregnancy when the central nervous system (in particular the brian ) is developing has the main effect.

Most pregnant women are not addicts, neither are they being controlled and have a lot more control than the father of the child does.

The idea that women were responsible for children hasn't done WC men anyt good. Mostly the men are pushed to one side and not given equal status in the parenting stakes.

But most pregnant women are NOT addicts and well able to drink one glass of wine/eat one lump of soft cheese/whatever and as such should be given THE FACTS.

If someone IS an addict they should be given help and support applicable to THEIR situation.

I will give you a case senario.

A woman whoo is an addict has 3 children, all disabled to some degree because of her actions during or after pregnancy, they are removed.

She gets pregnant again some years later, to a man who doesn't know her past. He is willing to parent the child, he cannot do anything and neither can the law to make sure this women behaves in a way that will give this child a chance to be born healthy, or even survive.

How is this treating the woman badly? because she has been handed a leaflet during her pregnancy with advice on it? Why shouldn't she be?

Who in this senario is being helped by this idea that patriachy is controlling pregnant women?

Birds you're hardly upset that maternity systems don't benefit wc men! why the hell should they You are just plain wrong by saying unless a negative is proven you are being selfish. Nobody says don't eat one carrot, because eating truckloads of carrots is harmful.

Maisie, I don't see it as wrong, plainly, or else I wouldn't have done it.