My Pregnancy, My Wine and DH.

[ThymeCrisis]

I’ve namechanged for this but I’ve been around a long time.

Last night DH and I went out for dinner. I’m 6 months pregnant. It was a lovely local Italian place and he ordered a Peroni, I ordered a glass of Prosecco. It was fairly late because he’d watched the first half of the football in the pub after work first, and I’d joined him later, so he’d already had a fair few pints beforehand.

For context, I have been having the odd (125ml) glass of wine or champagne or Prosecco approx once a week (occasionally twice, but I wouldn’t have two drinks on the same night) since I was 16 weeks or so. I felt too ropey before that to contemplate it. Always have the drink with food, always sip very slowly. I was big into wine before I got pregnant and after doing a lot of research (I do have the Emily Oster book but I read lots more research and have come to the conclusion that it’s a negligible ‘risk’ on such a small scale and felt comfortable with my decision. We are talking 1.5 units here.

DH was a bit quiet after I ordered the Prosecco. We had a nice meal and walked home, he then made himself a gin and tonic, and I had a fake version with an M&S seedlip rip off. I asked him if he was ok and why he’d been a bit off. He then said he had ‘come to terms’ with me having the odd drink at home but he’d felt really uncomfortable with me ordering anything alcoholic out in public, because I was visibly pregnant, and he was really worried about what other people in the restaurant were thinking.

I didn’t notice any judgement, and never have, but frankly I wouldn’t care if there was. He also reminded me of the time we had some family round and I had a glass of champagne, and said he’d felt unhappy about it then too.

The reasons he is giving are that he knows of no one who drank in pregnancy (bar our own mothers who drank according to the guidelines in the mid 80’s at the time) and he thinks a big reason I do it is to ‘challenge’ the patriarchy and to go against the rules, not because I truly fancy a glass of wine. This is bullshit but I have ranted before about pregnant woman being infantilised and deemed not capable of critical thought. We don’t really actually know many other friends that have gone through pregnancy either, but he maintains they would have cut out all alcohol. Yes I know what the NHS guidelines say but I’m of the opinion that they say ‘none at all’ because it’s safer than ‘trusting’ women to not underestimate the units in a glass of wine etc or use it as an excuse to binge. Which I would absolutely never do. I know what a unit is.

For what it’s worth I’ve cut down, but not eliminated, caffeine, and I eat soft cheese and Parma ham too, and I have my steak rare or medium-rare.

He is now saying that the drinking is not something he’s comfortable with anymore and just because I have a book that says it’s fine I just have no way to know if we’ve put our unborn son at risk or not, and if he was pregnant he wouldn’t touch a drop. He can’t handle me ordering a drink in public anymore as it just makes him feel too uncomfortable- it didn’t so much when I didn’t have a bump but he hates the fact that ‘people are judging and looking at us’ now that I do.

I fully expect to get some replies about how he’s right and I am being reckless with my pregnancy, and that it’s only 9 months and why can’t I just cut it out all together, and the answer is, I had weighed up or thought I’d weighed up, whether I truly I had to, and considered myself to be in very safe limits. I like the taste of good wine and the foods it goes with. Yes I’ve tried alcohol free wine and it’s rank, I’d be more likely to cut everything out than drink pretend versions.

So I’ve just woke up this morning upset that he’s had all these thoughts about me causing harm to our baby (for what it’s worth I had a miscarriage before this pregnancy, and I know that was not down to alcohol as I hadn’t drunk at all as I lost it in the first trimester, so it didn’t affect my decision to have the odd drink in this pregnancy) and also that he’s inflicting other peoples judgments on me and just generally making me feel really bad. He’s said that if the child has behavioural difficulties down the line then he can’t rule out that it could be down to drinking.

So hit me with it- am I being unreasonable?

[quote Bizawit]@ChangPart1 I just don’t agree with you at all that he has a greater say in what she does with her body.
When I was pregnant I did not consider my body to be public property , or the private property of my baby’s father, just because it was harbouring a fetus with his genetic material.
Of course, I , like any well pregnant woman who wanted to keep the child , was conscious of the decisions I made and how it might impact the health of the pregnancy but we all have different boundaries and perceptions of risk. Some people give up coffee, even tea entirely, others don’t. Some eat soft cheese and salami and rare meat. Some do rigorous exercise , others consider that dangerous. Some people won’t get on an airplane or in a hot bath.

It’s the pregnant woman’s choice to make and nobody- not the state, her partner - anyone can claim otherwise . And that’s absolutely the way it should be if we don’t want to live in the handmaids Tale.[/quote]
I agree it’s her choice to make, and on the first page I said so. Ultimately in cases where they disagree OP gets the final say. But I stand by the fact that DH gets a say, certain people have castigated him for sharing his opinion that OP shouldn’t drink when he has every right to share that. But yes, I do think that in a couple where one person is carrying a child that belongs to both of them the non pregnant partner has more of a right to a say in what their partner does that could affect the baby than when nobody in the scenario is pregnant. I’d be horrified if DH was carrying our baby, doing something that could harm them, and dismissed my concerns and continued doing it because he prioritised drinking over my concerns for our child.

I think you need to get a thicker skin if you’re going to post something like this on here OP, I’m sorry you’re upset but really what did you expect? You’re going against drink and food guidance for pregnancy and your DH wishes regarding alcohol. It’s his baby too and yes, he’s still drinking but he is not the one who is pregnant. I’m 33 weeks pregnant and love wine, I’ve missed it so much particularly when we have the lovely weather. I wouldn’t deny my DH though, I’ve told him to take full advantage of me being the designated driver!

I think in a pp she said he didn’t of course

So he's not that worried then

I have a close relative who a few years ago contracted a listeria infection they reckoned from a seafood restaurant. She lost her baby at 17 weeks. I wish I was making that up. She still carried that guilt. She gambled with the small risk and lost.

It’s not something to fuck about with.

I think you need to get a thicker skin if you’re going to post something like this on here OP, I’m sorry you’re upset but really what did you expect?

Probably not to be called an addict

I can see both sides. I didnt drink during my pregnancy....there are other small joys. Tbh i prob would judge you deep down ( unfair though that is). Why take the risk ? My treat was a chinese takeaway or a slice of cake.

This is what the science says .
Results of a study published by Popova et al. The table shows by WHO Geographical región, rates of alcohol consumption during pregnancy (any) vs rates of FAS syndrome
www.thelancet.com/action/showFullTableHTML?isHtml=true&tableId=tbl1&pii=S2214-109X%2817%2930021-9

What you’re missing here is the reality that DH DOES have a greater say in what OP does with her body right now because her body is growing HIS child.

Don't be ridiculous. Nobody has a say with what someone does with their body. A potential father can give an opinion but they don't have any rights over someone elses body.

@awaketoosoon

I think you need to get a thicker skin if you’re going to post something like this on here OP, I’m sorry you’re upset but really what did you expect?

Probably not to be called an addict

Then post in the pregnancy forums rather than AIBU which is full of people waiting to have a go!

[quote Kisskiss]This is what the science says .
Results of a study published by Popova et al. The table shows by WHO Geographical región, rates of alcohol consumption during pregnancy (any) vs rates of FAS syndrome
www.thelancet.com/action/showFullTableHTML?isHtml=true&tableId=tbl1&pii=S2214-109X%2817%2930021-9[/quote]
It's all an estimate though and likely to be incredibly inaccurate. How likely are women to give a true description of whether or how much they drank if guidelines state that they shouldn't. Also, much of the drinking will be in the first trimester when women often don't know they are pregnant and could be quite heavy drinking.

@Bizawit

But he's not pregnant .

Right. He’s not bloody pregnant.
So let me get this straight - women on this forum think that there are different rules for op drinking because she’s pregnant, but no different rules for her DH in terms of the level of control he’s allowed to exert on her decisions about her body?
DOUBLE STANDARDS.

Either there’s a difference in their position and roles, or there’s not.

If there’s a difference he can drink what he likes , cos he’s not pregnant, and also stfu and let OP decide what she does with her own pregnant body.

If there’s no difference and they’re in this together, he can bloody quit drinking too to show some solidarity and respect. He himself said that if he were pregnant he would have no problem not drinking for 9 months, so why doesn’t he demonstrate how easy that is, and do it for his pregnant wife?

Because he’s not pregnant! What a stupid post!

@Belladonna12 actually it’s not an estimate, it’s a clear study showing that the correlation between consuming alcohol and FAS incidence is very high. Just look at the spread between EUR region and Rest of World…
What’s not so clear is how much alcohol would be safe, unfortunately It’s going to be hard to do that sort of survey unless you find enough people willing to voluntarily roll if the dice of their offspring’s health for a medical study…
It goes back to how much risk are you willing to take, and for what upside.. what’s the upside here???

I don't think your unreasonable to have the odd small glass of wine op! But two a week?? To me that's not the odd glass.
It's more than I drink each week and I'm not pregnant!!
I'm not judging but when I read your op I thought wow it's only nine months, Is it not possible for you to cut down further just for the pregnancy?I honestly think two glasses of wine a week while pregnant is too much. I'm sorry, I don't want to upset you, but just my opinion.
I think I'd feel similar to your husband about the drinks in public, because people do look and judge, I must admit I've seen pregnant people drinking and thought wow! So yeah I probably judge too. I just think two glasses each week is quite alot during pregnancy. Maybe a glass of wine at a celebration or once or twice a month is ok, but I do think drinking twice a week is quite selfish, I'm sorry.

Whilst it would be nice if her husband quit drinking in solidarity, if he doesn't, it's not going to harm their unborn child is it?!

If my husband was the pregnant one and he was choosing to do unnecessary things that could potentially harm our unborn child, I'd be really fucking angry and I would certainly have an opinion. No, I wouldn't be able to actually do anything about it but it would certainly give me pause.

I would really struggle to live with the guilt if anything did go wrong. Why risk having that dilemma when you could just not drink/smoke/sushi 🤷‍♀️

Anyway, not my circus, not my baby, but I don't think her husband is unreasonable to have an opinion.

What’s not so clear is how much alcohol would be safe, unfortunately It’s going to be hard to do that sort of survey unless you find enough people willing to voluntarily roll if the dice of their offspring’s health for a medical study…

Not necessarily - research can be done based on what people are doing anyway. Links between smoking and ill health were not made by assigning people to a smoking or non smoking group, they were made looking at outcomes of existing smokers. The same could be done with drinking or not drinking in pregnancy. The only problem is getting women to be honest and the fact that drinking isn’t quite as easy to measure as smoking.

and shows how many of the alleged benefits of breastfeeding (such as higher IQ or decreases chance of obesity) have been debunked.

Not been debunked - that’s just wrong.

Of that one study Oster writes:

“But the mothers who breastfed longer were also richer, had more education and had higher IQ scores themselves. Once the authors adjusted for these variables, the effects of nursing were much smaller.”

Call it “smaller” if you like but it’s still there and it’s measurable. That study she describes found:

“In this study of a population of relatively high socioeconomic status, we found a positive association between duration of breast feeding and mental development, even after adjusting for maternal age, maternal education, maternal intelligence”.

It was also dose dependant “we found that a shorter duration of breast feeding was associated with lower scores on mental developmental tests both at 13 months and at 5 years of age.”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1718901/pdf/v085p00183.pdf

2021 paper:“Breastfeeding confers many health and emotional benefits to mothers and babies [41, 42] and is reliably associated with higher cognitive ability in children [43,44,45].”

and

“43% women were exclusively breastfeeding at 1 month and an additional 16.8% were engaged in mixed or partial breastfeeding. Both exclusive breastfeeding (B = 2.19; SD = 0.36, p =.00) and mixed feeding (B = 1.59; SD= 0.52; p=.00) were positively associated with IQ at 8 years of age, after adjusting for covariates.”

bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-020-03520-8

2015 study in the Lancet found a 3.76 IQ point increase. Controlled for confounders. You could call that small but it is statistically significant.
www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(15)70002-1/fulltext

The breastfeeding misinformation and denial is just staggering. We need to stop it. I know it’s difficult but we need to take the emotion out of it and provide unbiased evidence based information.

It wasn’t to “no ill effect” the WHO estimates that 1 in 100 babies born have some sort of FASD. The guidance to drink nothing is based on evidence.

It is very unlikely that the mothers of babies born with FASD only drank one glass of wine a week. If that was all it took most people over the age of 20 would have it.

I'm reminded of the old wise 'joke' about the old lady looking for a chauffeur, who asks each of the three applicants how close they could confidently drive towards a cliff edge, to prove their driving skills.

The first one says that he could easily get as close as four feet from the edge. The second scoffs at this and says that, with his superior spatial awareness skills, he could quite confidently get to just one foot from the edge.

The third applicant is the one who gets the job, immediately after she says "I wouldn't dream of going anywhere near the edge - why on earth would you?!"

[quote Kisskiss]@Belladonna12 actually it’s not an estimate, it’s a clear study showing that the correlation between consuming alcohol and FAS incidence is very high. Just look at the spread between EUR region and Rest of World…
What’s not so clear is how much alcohol would be safe, unfortunately It’s going to be hard to do that sort of survey unless you find enough people willing to voluntarily roll if the dice of their offspring’s health for a medical study…
It goes back to how much risk are you willing to take, and for what upside.. what’s the upside here???[/quote]
The numbers are estimates because they can't possibly get a true idea of whether or how much a woman drank alcohol during pregnancy, particularly in regions where it is against guidelines or even illegal. While FAS is clearly associated with heavy drinking, particularly in early pregnancy (when many people don't know they are pregnant) there is no evidence that one glass of wine in later pregnancy will cause it.
As for the upside, it's pretty obvious that some people enjoy a small glass of wine and (before you say it) that doesn't mean that are alcoholics. I'm sure you did things when pregnant because you enjoyed them rather than because they where essential and you couldn't be certain that everything you did carried no risk. Did you ever go in a car for example? There is a risk with that and I doubt every journey was essential.

@CecilyP

What’s not so clear is how much alcohol would be safe, unfortunately It’s going to be hard to do that sort of survey unless you find enough people willing to voluntarily roll if the dice of their offspring’s health for a medical study…

Not necessarily - research can be done based on what people are doing anyway. Links between smoking and ill health were not made by assigning people to a smoking or non smoking group, they were made looking at outcomes of existing smokers. The same could be done with drinking or not drinking in pregnancy. The only problem is getting women to be honest and the fact that drinking isn’t quite as easy to measure as smoking.

Yes well like you said, they have done the drinking/not drinking one. The results are above, Clear positive correlation. It’s harder to do one on how many units vs incidence, you need a lot of respondents , who drink a consistent amount etc. That’s what I meant. Meanwhile, it hasn’t been established what anount is actually safe…

“ Did you ever go in a car for example? There is a risk with that and I doubt every journey was essential.”
Haha yes of course, how absurd. Show me the stats which show heightened risk to pregnant people from car journeys ( vs non pregnant people).. but anyhoo back to risk vs reward, in some places, car journeys are the only way to get around, therefore somewhat unavoidable. Alcohol isn’t…

Yes well like you said, they have done the drinking/not drinking one. The results are above, Clear positive correlation. It’s harder to do one on how many units vs incidence, you need a lot of respondents , who drink a consistent amount etc. That’s what I meant. Meanwhile, it hasn’t been established what anount is actually safe…

How would they actually know whether someone was being truthful about whether they did or didn't drink though?

I think some people are only getting so het up on here because A MAN dared to have an opinion on a woman's bodily choices.

If OP had come on here said "I fancy necking 2 glasses of wine a week throughout my pregnancy, what do you think?", I reckon some of these answers would be quite different.

You can't compare drinking to getting in a car. Driving to work or Tesco is hardly one of life's pleasures is it? More of a necessity.

@Belladonna12

Yes well like you said, they have done the drinking/not drinking one. The results are above, Clear positive correlation. It’s harder to do one on how many units vs incidence, you need a lot of respondents , who drink a consistent amount etc. That’s what I meant. Meanwhile, it hasn’t been established what anount is actually safe…

How would they actually know whether someone was being truthful about whether they did or didn't drink though?

Ok so it’s more likely someone lies about being teetotal than drinking. Probably there’s the same incidence if fibbage going on everywhere, so just inflate those alcohol drinking incidence numbers by whatever percentage you like.. the correlation is still there. And if you want to think EUR people are more truthful, the gap is still huge.. you can’t argue with those numbers, frankly

I wasn’t perfect in my pregnancy, had a can of Coke now and again because it helped with sickness and it’s just lovely but I didn’t have any alcohol even though I wanted it more than anything. My friend had a glass of pro in her baby shower and I didn’t judge her but if she was drinking 1/2 a week throughout the pregnancy..? that’s not the odd drink.
It’s your body, your baby but it could be harming the baby but you won’t stop because of women being infantilized?
When you’re pregnant you do need to unfortunately realise it’s not about your wants and needs any more.
My husband offered to give up drinking for 9 months and I told him not to be so stupid but he did cut down and barely anything. Maybe your husband can do the same ?

Why would anyone drink during pregnancy? Totally selfish and unnecessary risk