if you think its ok to have a glass of wine a week in pregnancy is it ok to have a cigarette a week?

[Beatrixemerald]

Just asking opinions, not sure what mine is really as was teetotal for years pre pregnancy so didn't need to think about it, but I was a smoker until I found out I was pregnant.
I just wonder if we are as a society far more tolerant of drinking vs smoking and this translates through to pregnancy as nhs advice seems to be to avoid both.

Given that actual lives are at stake, I think we should do what works best.

Yes, babies lives aswell

Well at least we agree on something

Being judgmental and banging on about the risks all the time doesn't work, it makes things worse. Do you care more about women's and babies' health or about making smokers feel like shit?

I care about women's and babies' health. I guess where we differ is that I feel that women aren't always taking enough responsibility as grown ups to protect their's and their babies health so need to face up to it even if the truth hurts their feelings

I got as far as

03/03/2015 20:29 BathtimeFunkster

I gave up everything and then I had a really stupid, ugly baby anyway.

Before I collapsed into fits of hysterics.

It's amazing how a woman loses all right to choice when they're pregnant.

Tuna is probably worse than a cigarette a week. Different countries advise against different foods. And so on and on and on.

Too many/too few vitamins, too much/too little water, all bad for you, all bad for baby.

You get to choose what you do. You don't get to dictate to anyone else.

Not that amazing. You get pregnant, you now have an additional responsibility. In fact you dont lose your right to choice. but any right to choice, comes with a responsibility.

But that is your choice. I would never presume to tell another adult how to behave.

I would choose to follow guidelines. I have. But it's no one's place to decide what someone else does.

If you thought someone was putting their child at risk, would you say something to that person?

It's not comparable. The right comparison would be 'if you thought someone was putting their own life at risk, would you say something'.

The baby has no rights until it is born.

If you thought someone was putting their child at risk, would you say something to that person?

I would think: am I a medical professional? Am I that person's midwife or GP? Am a researcher with a long and illustrious career in foetal toxic assessment? Am I the babies father and intimately close to the mother.

If the answer to all the above was "no" - then no I wouldn't. Barring immediate, potentially fatal, danger "just about to eat this fugu!" for example!

the baby has no right until it's born

That's really sad and that makes me feel uncomfortable. This is a life, a baby, a human being has chosen to bring into the world, to have the attitude of "Well I can do whatever I like, who cares if it's hurts the baby, it's not like it matters until it's been born anyway" just abhorrent really.

Are all the 'it's fine to smoke' posters as nonchalant about women who choose to take drugs during pregnancy too?

I absolutely believe that if a woman chooses to have a baby then it is her responsibility to keep that baby safe during pregnancy.

It's not sad.

It's really, really, really bloody important and crucial to women having full legal personhood.

Ridiculous. It is comparable. Your comparison is wrong.

The baby has no rights until it is born.
That is such a cold thing to say. and wrong. and rather disgusting.

If that is how people feel on here, then good riddance to this thread.

Not every woman choses to have a baby.

No woman 'choses' to harm the baby (provided this is a pregnancy that she wants to continue with). There are many pressures on expecting mothers and I would argue you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who genuinely does not know that smoking/drinking/drugs in pregnancy is not idea.

None of know what it is like for somebody else to be pregnant.
Make you own choices, do what you feel is right for you with the information you have, and leave other people be.

An unborn fetus has NO legal rights.
That is a legal definition.
Of course that makes many people v uncomfortable and many of us have felt very protective of our unborn children. I've had a baby at 31 weeks - had he stayed inside me for the usual length of time, he'd've had NO RIGHTS until his birth. As it was, he became legally a person at 31 weeks.

The issue her is not about whether or not to smoke/drink in pregnancy, it's about judging other people for how they lead their lives.
Of course we all make judgement calls - for ourselves and for others.

And another thing, how on earth can any woman 'keep that baby safe' during pregnancy? There are no guarantees - you can do everything 'right' and still something goes wrong, you can break every 'rule' and still have problems.
That does not suggest we should go out of our way to endanger our pregnancies, but lets just assume that people are doing the best they know how to.

Saying 'don't smoke' will achieve nothing.
Saying 'you are an unfit mother if you smoke' will just alienate people.
Having timely and effective support in place may help some people to make healthy choices.

Writer: Nobody is nonchalant - at least I don't feel they are. Simply put: no one really has the attitude that "Well I can do whatever I like, who cares if it's hurts the baby, it's not like it matters until it's been born anyway" - thats not how it works is it. Its not a conscious thing like that.

A woman who prioritises drugs over her baby is in the grip of an addiction and needs urgent support and help. It would be a tragic and very serious scenario.

A woman who smokes heavily is in the grip of an addiction and needs support and help.

A woman who smokes a fag a day probably shouldn't, obviously broccoli would be a better choice but it is not the end of the world and as has been pointed out on this thread (many many times) pregnant women encounter worse toxins unwittingly.

Womens' rights of bodily autonomy when pregnant are a very important and huge issue. If she is not in control over her body who is? The father? The state? A poster on Mumsnet?

It's not about how I feel. It's about the law. In places where this is not the law, women have restricted rights to bodily autonomy. Women die. Doctors can cut women open against their consent. It is really really important that the law recognizes that women, first and foremost, have a right to bodily autonomy. That they are not just vessels.

You must think very little of women to think they are all recklessly hurting their babies because they're just selfish. Women's lives are complicated and none of us are in a better position than that individual woman to decide what is best for her, for her situation.

God I'm seriously buggered. Got pregnant whilst in the grips of a massive crohn's flare up so was on all sorts of medication. Then had to take anti sickness meds till 18 weeks as was horrifically sick and couldn't care for my other two children and now I have a glass of red a couple of times a week.

There's no hope for this baby then is there?!

Let's stop judging each other and use some common sense. What works for one, doesn't for another.

Sorry if my initial post wasn't very clear I don't think I got my point across very well. I totally understand that for a variety of reasons (usually the mother's health) the pregnancy cannot be done 'perfectly right' and I do understand that drugs, drinking and smoking are an addiction and are not something that a person can simply stop doing.

I'm on my phone so I can't scroll back but I can also see hoe the poster who has spoken about her mental health and smoking (apologies for not remember your username) chose smoking to be the 'least' risk to her baby than the harm that could arise to her child as a result of her risking her own mental health. I know that no pregnancy and ideal and there are lots of contributory factors as to why in some women's situations their babies are exposed to certain risks during pregnancy.

The only thing I find hard to accept is the attitude of the baby having no rights until it's born. I know that's what the Law says but if a woman actually believed this about her own baby during the pregnancy than I would think we to be very cold and heartless.

There's a big difference between a woman who smokes for complicated reasons (like the previous poster) and acknowledges that she may potentially be causing some harm but smoking is the better option than the alternative, to a woman who chooses to smoke because her attitude to her unborn baby is that it doesn't have any rights so she can do what she likes and to hell with the consequences to the baby.

Neither is acceptable, it should be against the law to smoke or drink when oregnant. I think it is very selfish.

I think it is very selfish

Well, then don't drink or smoke when you are pregnant.
God help us should there ever be a law as you propose

Well they have/ are slowly introducing the law against smoking in a car with a child fingers crossed over the years that filters through to ban parents from smoking in the home with children, smoking when preganant and drinking when pregnant

We can live in hope that 1 day children come first and patents are forced to put their kids health first

Parents * stupid phone :-)

How on earth could you make it against the law? What about all of us who found out we were pregnant after we's already been out drinking? That's a lot of prosecutions - I was eight weeks with my first when I realised, I'd been on holiday to France and drunk every day! Not to mention the cheese, pate and rare steak! Lock me up!

What about women planning terminations? Should they be prohibited from drinking or smoking by law whilst they wait for the appointment?

What about women with addiction issues or mental health issues? Shall we prosecute them for their 'selfishness'? What if an addicted smoker discovers theirpregnancy following a rape? Shall we criminalize her?

What about the hundreds of thousands of millions of perfectly healthy babies born to women who had the odd glass of wine throughout their pregnancies? It wouldn't be at all damaging to those babies to give their mothers a criminal record would it?

And don't forget we'd be making this law in the total absence of any proven evidence that light drinking actually causes any harm to an unborn baby. They don't make laws based on scaremongering ITV documentaries, by the way.

And what about the countries in the world where these repressive and restrictive laws actually exist and women are currently serving decades in prison for having miscarriages? Read up on that, the stories are heartbreaking. Women who have lost their babies through no fault of their own, spending the rest of their fertile years in jail because they live in a country with misogynist, ill-informed, hideously unfair legal systems.

I really didn't want to get sucked into another pointless thread on this issue, but I just can't let such vapid stupidity go unchallenged.

The fetus has no legal rights.
Women are people first and foremost and have the immovable right to bodily autonomy.

The law can never change - the consequences if it did are unimaginable.

What choices you make or anybody else is a whole other ball game.

I am no over and out.