To think 2 glasses of wine per week won't do any harm?

[Poptart4]

I fully expect to be eaten alive for this post but here we go...

I'm 4 weeks pregnant with my 4th child. With my first 3 pregnancies I didn't touch a drop for 9 months and all dc were perfectly healthy. However I have watched people, friends/acquaintances, binge drink every weekend through out their pregnancies and their children were also perfectly healthy.

To be clear i would never binge drink while pregnant!

But I have been thinking that maybe 2 glasses of wine max on a Friday evening won't do any harm.

What do you think? Anyone else done the same? Did it harm your baby?

research on moderate drinking in pregnancy

Royal College of Gynaecologists

BMJ

Independent
news report from last year

extract:
David Spiegelhalter, professor for the public understanding of risk at University of Cambridge, said: “This valuable and humane study has shown that warnings about the dangers of drinking any alcohol at all during pregnancy are not justified by evidence.

“A precautionary approach is still reasonable, but with luck this should dispel any guilt and anxiety felt by women who have an occasional glass of wine while they are pregnant.”

Dr Christoph Lees, clinical reader in obstetrics at Imperial College London, said: “This meta-analysis of light drinking in pregnancy points to the generally weak evidence on which government advice is based.

For an alternative choice, I love the Sainsbury's alcohol free sparkling wine when pregnant or just not drinking.
I love wine & it makes me feel like I'm having a glass. It's got like 0.5 % I think.

Or you could try that non alcoholic gin that's nice too.

Or just have a glass of wine - jeeze worse things happen people!

You are an adult and not just a vessel. You should do your own research. Look at the evidence. Decide whether the guidance reflects the medical research and the hard evidence. Weigh up the risk IN RELATION TO all the other miniscule risks we take, every day, in the cars we drive, the food we eat, the exercise we do or don't take, the folic acid we do or don't swallow, the paracetemol we take for that headache, heck, the air we breathe... every day we judge a million little risks and weigh them up against the impact on living our OWN lives as a full human being.

There is no point listening to a sanctimonious twit who takes triple the risks you do in general, because they've arbitrarily latched onto one in particular that they want to beat you over the head with.

Do your research. Make the decision you want to live with. Accept the risk you are happy with knowing that life is about accepting a level of risk.

And do not ask permission, blessings, approval or judgement from others.

Why on earth would you risk it? Is a glass of wine more important than the health of your unborn child?

What constitutes a ‘small amount’ of alcohol though? That’s very different person to person.

Shrug. Up to you bit personally, if you can't go 9 months without wine then it's an issue...

Yep. Judgey pants hoiked right up to my chin.

Yes, yes, yes Barracker.

Dare I suggest that the reason children of moderate drinkers apparently do better than children of total abstainers is because they have parents who are capable of this kind of sensible, non knee jerk reasoning?

Yanbu op. Can someone link to evidence of anyone having a child with ill health due to one large glass of wine a week?

That said the heartburn would have made it entirely not worth it for me

OP, at the end of the day, you don’t know for sure if two glasses of wine a week will cause any harm or not, so you’d be better off avoiding it altogether and not taking notice of anecdotal evidence.

Whilst we’re on the subject of risk the listeria thing drove me insane with anxiety. Until i read the last 2 outbreaks of it were in butter and salad! No one avoids those. A lot of the things we are told to avoid in pregnancy have no evidence to back them up. This time I will eat all the cheese I want and not worry. I will probably still avoid the booze though.

You can't even have fucking lettuce anymore. I swear to God if men could get pregnant we wouldn't be having these conversations.

It would be 'no rugby unless it's a really important game' and that's it

Mono none of the advice anywhere will say what women are 'allowed' to do in pregnancy because as adults we are entitled to make our own decisions based on our own research, and thankfully the NHS recognises this and makes recommendations.

The fact is that they have to make recommendations based on the knowledge that most people don't bother to do their own research and don't make informed decisions.

As this thread demonstrates they are right to do so because all of the handwringing from people who have clearly not actually done any research for themselves berating those of us who have and have made an informed decision on that basis.

Same here Scram. I couldn't touch wine, gave me heartburn and made me nauseous and didn't taste right. I had lots of Beck's Blue no alcohol beer.

Minipie

Are you for real????? Seriously. Read your post again.

You must be on the wine now.

Ridiculous.

the sleeping your back stuff really pisses me off too.

There has been a small study done recently in which ALL of the babies were born healthy. Yet from this study they decided that maybe sleeping on your back could cause stillbirth..... theres NO evidence, its purely speculation. They couldnt say it wouldnt for sure and they couldnt say it would. They thought it might do... that was the result of the study and as i said ALL the babies in the study were actually born healthy, non of them were still born.

And from that it has become the headline 'PREGNANT MOTHERS SLEEPING ON THEIR BACKS CAN CAUSE STILLBIRTH'

and whilst on the NHS website it does say if you read in detail about there not actually being any real scientific evidence to support this... the NHS guidelines are still to sleep on your left side

I agree with minipie.

And the scentific research backs that up.

I really reccomend a copy of Expecting Better by Emily Oster Thierry if you want to have a look for yourself.

"Judgy pants hoiked to my chin"
Mine are hoiked at the unthinking stupidity of judging someone for doing perfectly safe

Why are those who follow their own experiences and research deciding to abstain deemed "twits" and not capable of sensible reasoning?

It's a choice to be made, there are valid reasons for minimal alcohol consumption during pregnancy but each person is free to decide for themselves.

monoblock 'what constitutes a small amount of alcohol'.... that is the main reason why the NHS guidelines were changed to 'no alcohol' instead of a small amount. Not because of proof a small amount of alcohol was bad for a fetus but because there was proof that women were drinking more than a small amount and justifying it because of the NHS guidelines.

I drunk through my pregnancy. Nowhere near as much as usual though, my baby was perfectly fine.
I will drink during any future pregnancies as well.

Please, please don’t, especially in the first trimester.

I notice the OP has kept quiet

I could not agree more with the point made about if men carried babies. I honestly think we have gone from 1-2 units once to twice a week to none because it is felt women cannot be trusted to know what a unit is.

And we can be relied upon to keep each other nicely in check by judgement and bosom hoiking

Happy mummy

Lucky you.

How much did you drink? That's what you want us to ask isn't it?

Later on in pregnancy a glass of wine probably isn't going to hurt. Whatever you're comfortable with. Maybe ask your doctor if you're still unsure? Im sure it'd be fine, I had the odd glass.