Midwife: "No caffeine at all" er... really? Are you kidding me??

[zerominuszero]

Still early on in my pregnancy, saw mw for the first time. I am going teetotal - my only vice is a single cup of tea in the morning. "Try to cut it down to no cups of tea," mw says.

Er... how is this anything other than total bullshit? I find it hard to believe that there are any studies that demonstrate any problem with ONE cup of tea in pregnancy. So why bother lying to me about it? All it does it cause me to lose respect for her and question whether anything she says is based on actual evidence, rather than voodoo rituals and astrology.

I know it's only a small thing, but... it really annoys me. So there you go.

I'd ask for her evidence.You're right-complete shit.

OMG

There was a relatively recent American study that suggested even small amounts of caffeine could increase your risk of miscarriage. But the increase in risk is still tiny and that was just one study, so it hasn't changed the guidelines at all.

Guidelines are still limit it to 200mg a day - that works out at 2-3 cups of tea a day.

a single cup of tea is more than OK; I drank approx 2 to 3 a day, plus the odd coffee.
Can't believe she told you that.

I couldn't have got through my third pregnancy without two cups of coffee a day. I was so exhausted I would have been unable to function without it.

No cups of tea?

I drink decaff, 4th pregnancy

Bollocks.

3 cans of coke zero a day here, upped it to 4 to cope with the sleep deprivtion in the early post-natal days .

i drink decaf coffee and diet coke and my 3 dc's are fine so i wouldnt stress

Aaargh this is why you should never bekieve anything midwives say! I honestly think that they are trained to find SOMETHING wrong with how you're doing things -esp. if it's your first b/c clearly then you are irresponsible and clueless! feeling outraged on your behalf!

or even believe!

I cut it out completely- I remember the experiments they did with spiders, reported in New Scientist quite a while back now (15 years or so). They gave them various drugs and let them get on with building webs- the caffeine one was completely erratic and crap, so no caffeine for me during pg- it's only 9mo.

am sure if you look hard enough there will be some kind of study as to why you can't have just about anything pleasurable in pregnancy.

how about a study to cut down on the amount of crap we poor women are told by over opinionated health people who think we are too thick to make informed decisions for ourselves?

Good replies so far, thanks. I suppose if I were to defend midwives I might say that they probably see quite a few idiots who smoke and drink (heavily) through pregnancy so maybe they forget that not everyone is an idiot. Although having said that, I'd have thought that sensible mothers would be in a very large majority, so perhaps it's not that much of an excuse.

Thankfully my midwife (same for both DC) was a normal sane woman with a strong grip on reality but the more I read some of these forum posts I wonder if some of them have had one too many knocks on the head....

Jesus, it gets worse. Soon pregnant women will have to check into some sort of iron lung and be drip fed carrot juice for the duration

My fantastic old school midwife's answer to everything was...

Her: have a glass of wine and calm down. Put your feet up a bit. Make him cook the dinner."

Me: Er, um, I thought wine wasn't allowed in pregnancy?

Her: Yeah .... have a little glass then. We used to prescribe stout, you know.

OliviaMN are you pregnant??

Agree with everyone else about the caffeine. Quit when the baby's here and you fret that the tiniest amount stops them sleeping - I am on decaff and too scared to go back as my two sleep little enough as it is