To have a small drink whilst pregnant?

[PayingMyWayYouSay]

I'm just about 20 weeks now. Baby fine. Lovely little boy.

DH and I going to the pub that sells food this evening. Would I be unreasonable to have 1, just 1, WKD with my food?

DH is extremely against it and starts protesting in full when I even mention drinking alcohol

I tried to take a sip of his Fruity Cider today and there was a lot of "Why would you do that?"

He thinks it's harmful and isn't worth a marginal risk.

I know it's my body but it is his baby too so I think he's entitled to express his feelings.

Surely 1. Something unit is okay with food?

It won't be a regular thing, it's just something I fancy.

The book Expecting Better is not just a subjective pregnancy book but a review of available scientific literature. It is backed up by the research that it cites. The NHS provides guidance to suit the entirety of the population. It is - of course - backed by evidence but it also tweaked and nuanced to provide simplicity of message. It was decided to reduce the guidelines to zero purely due to the perception that pregnant women would misunderstand it or overestimate the amount they were 'allowed' as opposed to any new evidence.

OP, have your drink if you want one. Although if your partner is that opposed it might not be worth the aggro - totally your call. I suppose you could point him to the literature that shows no harm at all in having the occasional drink.

The NHS safe limit is none because people always push the boundaries rather than because no amount of alcohol is safe. If the NHS guidance was 1-2 units you would always get people saying ' if that's ok then 3s only one more so that's probably fine' or 'if 3 is ok then what's the harm in 4' and so on.

It doesn't matter how slowly you drink your cider. That's going across the placenta into your developing baby and increasing the risk of many diseases.

Could you name some of those diseases please?

Apparently it takes a couple of bottles of wine a day to cause alcohol feral syndrome - AFS isn't the only risk from alcohol.

Yeah, foetal alcohol syndrome and birth defects were invented by the NHS to keep us in line hmm

Way to leap from a sensible point to a dickish extreme.

witsender - so your DH has no say over the welfare of his child until it's born? Wow.

Of course he doesn't. Her body her choice. end of story.

Why would you get pregnant but can't put your baby first ?

Ridiculous .

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23905882

Prenatal alcohol exposure at levels less than daily drinking might be detrimentally associated with child behavior. The results of this review highlight the importance of abstaining from binge drinking during pregnancy and provide evidence that there is no known safe amount of alcohol to consume while pregnant.

I wouldn't , one drink can harm your baby .

I think that the occasional small glass of wine is fine also. I do draw the line, for no good reason, at spirits. It just seems wrong, I'm not sure why, Basically you want a vodka. That's what WKD is, so you're asking if you can have some vodka with your dinner,

I didn't drink at all, when I was pregnant, I didn't miss it though like you are, except at Xmas and new year. Pregnant and stone cold sober at a New Year's Eve party was fairly shit if I'm honest.

Personally, no, I personally wouldn't drink vodka when pregnant.

There isn't evidence to suggest a certain level of drinking is safe because no one knows how much will cause harm. However the only evidence that is 100% reliable is that the only way to guarantee that your baby won't have FAS is by not drinking ANY alcohol at all. I am a midwife and did not touch a drop in any of my pregnancies.

I explain the evidence and guidelines to the women in my care, up to them what they do with the advice. Same with you op. I don't understand the need for it, there was plenty of other drinks that taste nice that don't have alcohol in them. But ultimately it really is up to you.

I don't imagine many people drink pints of carrot juice in pregnancy, and if they did they probably wouldn't be aware of any of the risks and carrots contain many vitamins and nutrients that would also benefit a growing fetus. Alcohol does not.

This is from the BMA "alcohol in pregnancy" guidelines. It clearly states that because some women aren't able to stick to a low limit the safest thing to recommend is zero.

I'm going to listen more to research from. Harvard professor, outlining all risks and coming to a conclusion, than I am the NHS

I'm not happy with how little evidence NHS have to back up their 0 alcohol claim.

Probably won't drink my desired WKD but that's only because I respect DH isn't comfortable with it.

I wouldn't feel guilty.

I had sushi last week. I didn't think much of it because it'll probably be the last time I touch it for a long time.

How do you think the NHS comes to a conclusion? Experts read the evidence.

You're attaching significance to the fact a person went to a certain famous medical school but ignoring the fact that doctors (from top medical schools) contribute to NHS/NICE guidance.

Enjoy your WKD there is no risk in one. Drink it slowly.

Expecting better is generally sensible. I'd add the caveat that the author isn't a scientist though. I remember reading it and thinking hmmm no actually a few times.

a couple of bottles of wine a day to cause fas this is too simplistic a way of looking at it. Some women who drink at that level have babies that appear ok (although that doesn't mean thy are ok.) some who drink at lower levels have issues. FAS is a spectrum disorder - effects can range from very subtle to catastrophic.

At the end of the day, there is no defined safe level. The risk is small and you're an adult - it's your choice. The risk is not non zero.

alpaca
Several of the base studies used for that meta analysis have been roundly debunked for flawed methodology, including using US cohorts. Drinking while pregnant has been so long demonised in the US that it is very difficult to find a cohort of women who drank in pregnancy but didn't also indulge in risky behaviours during pregnancy and parenthood
When the studies are repeated with UK, European and Australian cohorts, where light drinking isn't demonised, the is no evidence of behaviour issues, lower IQ or developmental delay

It is also worth bearing in mind that there HUGE amount of political bias in the US around maternal behaviour so there is a real reason to question the motivation of some of these studies

I was pregnant long enough ago that the NHS guidance was 1-2 units once or twice a week, and my (female, mother of two) doctor said cheerfully that she'd be relaxed about anything up to 3 glasses of wine a week. After the first trimester I bought those miniature bottles of wine and had a spritzer on Friday with half of one, and a spritzer on Saturday with the other half. DD is now 7 and absolutely fine (though anecdote isn't data).

To those who are saying it isn't worth the risk, did you ever get in a car while pregnant? Live in a city with less-than-perfect air quality? The risks of both those things are much higher than the risks of drinking a small amount of alcohol. People disapprove of drinking alcohol because there's no reason to do it other than enjoyment, not because of the actual risk level. God forbid you might do something just because you like it while you're incubating a baby. (I had people preaching at me terribly because I carried on cycling till full term: the fact that it was better for my physical or mental health than being on the Tube obviously didn't count, because I wasn't a person any more, I was just a vessel.)

And I would have kicked DH into next week if he'd turned into the pregnancy police and told me what I could and couldn't do. Fortunately he recognised and respected that I was still a sentient and competent adult capable of assessing risk even though I was pregnant, so he left the decisions up to me.

How do you think the NHS comes to a conclusion? Experts read the evidence.

Yes but they make their points very simplistic because it's for the reading of even the most basic of literates.

There's not a lot of evidence they use to attach to their statements.

She's not even a bloody doctor, she did a BA in economics!

Hey
Have you ever read the book:
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong and What You Really Need to Know

Here the author has thoroughly researched case studies on alcohol during pregnancy.
She found that having a single alcoholic drink (drank slowly) had no more evidence of fetal alcohol syndrome or birth defects than mothers who abstained from alcohol completely.
It was studies on mothers who drank a single alcoholic drink a day (after the first trimester)
The placenta would struggle to cope with more than 1 unit.
A lot of women in European counties drink a small wine with food and it's the norm.

I personally don't drink but I think that we are told not to be extra cautious.
I think if doctors said it was okay to have 1 drink then people would take it too far and think then it must be okay to have 2 or more drinks then.

My opinion is that you should be okay with 1 drink as long as you don't drink it all in one!

Oh just realised someone has already mentioned the Expecting Better book
Sorry about that.

Sushi is fine, paying in moderation. All restaurant and shop sushi in the uk is pre frozen fish. The only risk is the same as consuming any top of the food chain fish - heavy metal exposure. Once a week is absolutely fine.

The NHS makes its points for the lowest common denominator. Easier to say 0 than 1 unit, as then people get confused over 1 unit. Say 1 drink, some may decide that is 1 double vodka, etc.

Drinking slowly with food is very different to downing a drink, which is fairly obvious. One will get you pissed and one is unlikely to, as the rate at which alcohol hits your system is very different.

I will also drink while breastfeeding, if I feel like it.