AIBU to think that a lot of foods on the pregnancy banned list...

[PurplePidjin]

...are also those banned by predominantly Old Testament based religions?

Prawns, crab, predatory fish like marlin and shark, bottom feeders like mussels etc

Actually, not just the OTHER based religions like Judaism and Islam. Afaik Hindus and, Buddhists have similar guidelines (but I know far less about those)

Coincidence?

'If it was about control it would be a ban'. That doesn't necessarily follow. A ban requires the power to enact it and, if it isn't to be irrelevant, the will to enforce it. It's certainly possible for there to be some who wish to control pregnant women without having sufficient power to do anything more than hector.

"to be honest, once you're a parent life is one long string of tiny risk assessments"

:)

Beautifully put!

and for that hectoring to impact negatively on pregnant women. Just because a person/lobby doesn't have the power to ban something, doesn't stop them having the power to do other things.

There would absolutely not be a significant number of pregnancies that ended due to listeria in one hospital. Listeria is very rare, there are less than 150 cases in the UK a year, only about 15% of those would be in pregnant women, and only 20% of those would end in fetal death. So thats, what 4 fetal deaths per year at most from listeriosis.

FACTS, not rumours. Either you misunderstood your contact, or someones lying.

And that there is the problem with these "guidelines". They take tiny little risks and turn them into certainties. Instead of "you might want to be careful where you buy your sandwiches as there is a small risk of listeria which might be a problem in pregnancy", you get "DON'T EVER EAT ANY OF THESE 3 MILLION THINGS OR YOUR BABY WILL CERTAINLY DIE OR BE DEFORMED, YOU SELFISH BITCH".

I do think it's just about avoid food poisioning, there's an arguement the jewish food laws were based on that.

I thought when you are pregnant you are more prone to catching food poisioning/if you get it it'll be worst than when not pregnant as your immune system is supressed to avoid your body 'rejecting' the baby, and that if you do get it, what will be a bad few days for you and then get over it, could cause you to lose the baby - so it's a bigger deal than getting food poisioning any other time of your life.

Thats true,your immune system has to lower or else your body will quite happily attack an embryo.

I don't think its about controlling women at all. The risks of both mercury and vit A are well researched. There is ongoing research into the risks of alcohol on a developing foetus.

The trouble is that the guidance is based partly on food poisoning risks and partly on known teratogens - combined with the fact that the advice changes quite frequently and especially nowadays most women know either via the internet or friends that it differs from country to country makes it all quite difficult to work out what to do.

8 years ago the advice wasn't particularly well explained and I had to do my own digging to find out what the reasons behind it were. I then made my own judgements about foods I particularly loved based primarily on the principle that if it was teratogenic I'd avoid it but if it was a food poisoning one I would carry on as normal in most cases.

I understand that they have to go for 'black and white' in as many cases as possible 'don't have x, y must be avoided etc' but I'd have preferred much more detail on reasonable limits. As an example I would have given pretty much anything for ice cold cans of coke for the 5 months when I was throwing up constantly but caffeine was very much presented as something to avoid - finally I discovered that actually a couple of cans a day or something was almost certainly not going to cause me to have a spontaneous miscarriage etc and the benefits to me of being able to glug some back were enormous.

There is indeed Bananas but this is not what the NHS tells women. If they simply said there is ongoing research and we don't know if a safe limit exists or not, that would be fine. Instead, the guidelines ignore the last piece of research because the conclusions were inconvenient.

Thanks for the facts CallMe, they are interesting figures :)

Yes but what we do know is that significant alcohol consumption does cause a developmental abnormality. What this significant amount is,nobody can conclusivley answer,nor at what stage of pregnancy it has the greatest effect. What they do know is that alcohol crosses the placenta. So whilst mum might feel fine after a couple of drinks,baby starts to display jerky movements. So its not about not trusting women to regulate their alcohol consumption,its not because we are walking incubators,its about being responsible for the decision we make to have a baby.

"it's about being responsible for the decision we make to have a baby."

Sorry, but what?

That's a non-sequitur.

Once again Bananas it would be fine to simply give women the facts, as you do in your first four sentences. But neither the NHS nor the D of H do this. They make a guess. If they said that although they don't know what the safe limit is or whether one exists, the only entirely safe thing to do is to avoid alcohol, that wouldn't involve them guessing or misleading anyone. It would also mean that their advice couldn't have holes picked in it like it can be now. As it is, your first four sentences are superior to the NHS and Department of Health advice. If my midwife had told me that, it would have ld me to have more faith in the advice I've been given.

As for the not trusting, sorry but that argument can't be sustained in the face of the decision not to tell women the truth about what we actually know for sure. I was told there was no safe limit. Nobody yet knows for sure whether there is one or not. So I was lied to as many other pregnant women are. Lying to me, rather than giving me the best information we have at the moment and leaving me to be responsible to make my own decision, is treating me like I can't be trusted. If other women don't mind being treated in this way, that's up to them, but some of us do.

When I was pregnant with DS1 the MW told me very solemnly and with great gravitas that I should not eat the skins of potatoes.

She failed to adequately explain why this should be so.

This is the same MW who informed me that drinking coke would make my breast milk fizzy.

Re: alcohol.

I was highly amused to find <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=pregnant+women+alcohol+symbol&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1024&bih=499&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=u7jnEQNQBMVaPM:&imgrefurl=feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/fanning-the-flames-advice-on-drinking-in-pregnancy/&docid=BxVrHyUQJHVsbM&imgurl=feministphilosophers.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/no-boozy-preggos.jpg&w=138&h=138&ei=KkilT_wS4dPRBYKK-YwE&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=538&vpy=203&dur=1185&hovh=110&hovw=110&tx=85&ty=77&sig=100902496667414121308&page=1&tbnh=110&tbnw=110&start=0&ndsp=10&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:76" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this image on the side of the delicious ice cold cider I was necking while pg with DS2.

I particularly like her Croydon facelift.

There is no evidence to suggest that a small amount of alcohol causes any difficulties whatsoever. The children I have worked with who had FAS had mothers drinking near lethal levels of alcohol in any case.

Telling us the facts about alcohol (the actual facts, not the ones they make up to justify the position) is one thing. The little pictures on booze bottles of a pregnant women with a drink and a big line through it is beyond insulting.

and congrats pidj that's one lucky baby :)

The 'control' idea is over-thinking. I honestly don't think there is some great conspiracy out there to stop me chowing down on deep fried goat's cheese in pregnancy. The percentage of women who follow all the rules is probably very small and limited to a particular demography which is vastly over-represented on parenting forums. And its interesting that women's perception of what isn't recommended is often stricter than the recommendations themselves. Its more about a broader trend towards over-anxious risk averse parenting than about society 'controlling' pregnant women.

PS Its also linked to an over-anxious attitude to health and diet generally which affects both genders. Think of those endless news stories about how eating peanut butter twice a decade might increase one's risk of cancer by 00.000001% or whatever

YABU & completely over thinking things. These things are banned for medical not religious reasons. I attend church regularly & don't recall "thou shalt not eat mould ripened cheeses".

Liver/offal - too high in vit a which can cause birth defects.
Mould ripened cheeses, raw eggs, shellfish - listeria or salmonella
Nuts - high allergy rates (although they have toned this down to only if there's a family history now)

In fact, the eggs thing is pretty much defunct as well - lion stamped eggs are vaccinated & screened these days, it's only fresh off the farm at the end of the road ones you should really worry about now.

Thing is, a lot of the advice thrown at pregnant women is contradictory. Too much protein? Not enough protein? Avoid all alcohol or your baby will be born with no head/a small Guinness every day will bring your milk on properly/whatever.

And even if you obey every piece of advice every random decides to give you, you still might not have a healthy baby. Shit still happens. And the biggest risk to pregnant women and foetuses is generally lack of access to maternity care/underfunded, understaffed, under too much pressure maternity units. But it's more culturally popular to blame women's 'selfishness' than to address the lack of funding for maternity care.

We're just laughing at the idea that the gov. could come up with such secret conspiracies to control!

I like this] article by Zoe Williams about the 'risks' of certain foods in pregnancy. And I was interested to read in the [[http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/foods-to-avoid-pregnant.aspx NHS guidelines that smoked salmon is fine, and sushi is often ok too.

Sorry, dodgy link. Zoe Williams article.