I want Brie and pate .......

[LoveBeingAbleToNamechange]

Just got back from waitrose and couldn't help but stand at the Brie and pate and imagine I was eating them. Very rare for it to bother me but today, [stamps foot] I want it

I never changed my diet either and boys boys are strong and extremely healthy. Can someone tell me when the last outbreak of food poisoning was with cheese or pate because I never found the answer??? The only answers I found on posioning was shop packed sandwiches! Even hams can carry some listeria (so can soil in your back garden).

I last bad outbreak of poisioning was the beansprouts wasnt it? Dont see that on the list so why all the fuss. Agree no where does it state you cant eat anything its an advisory - goes to show how things get misconstude!

Again I dont see Indian/chinese takeaways on the list either - god only knows whats going on in there and the chicken - imported from Thialand - I couldnt/wouldnt face that risk.

Plenty of wine, king prawns, shandys, liver, all cheese made for two super babies.

As for the coffee again this has been taken and twisted. The strength of coffee we drink (instant) isnt anything to worry about against the Italians expresso. I think you'd have to drink quite alot of it to be a problem.

Immune system suppressed - really is this a clinical fact???? Funny that i was the healthiest when I was pregnant. Listeria is deadly to the fetus not the mother if I remember.

The FSA have to report any slight danger, because if they dont, everyone is up in arms, because they werent warned. Yet the midwife doesnt tell you the list of all the dangers in yr life that could harm yr unborn baby - getting into yr car. Should they also say to cut down on household chemicals, overcleaning, cosmetics, living close to a motorway (asthma????).

The whole thing has just gone too far.

''Immune system suppressed - really is this a clinical fact?''

Thats why the guidelines mention avoiding stuff thats normally fine.

Well I was good until I hit 32 weeks and now I'm thinking of naming this little girl inside me Brie as I crave it so much- I stick to 1 segment a week though.

However- I dont touch alcohol- I dont usually anyway.

To be honest I think people pay way too much emphasis on foods they shouldnt eat and not enough on what they should be doing- ie excersize, eating more fruit and veg etc

''To be honest I think people pay way too much emphasis on foods they shouldnt eat and not enough on what they should be doing- ie excersize, eating more fruit and veg etc''

I agree, Im guilty of this.

Well I just had 9 months of pregnancy in France, and ate what I wanted in moderation, but making sure that any of the foods "to avoid" were absolutely fresh and, in the case of cheese, pasteurised (except the odd minor slip up). As for wine, my OB GYN explicitly gave me permission to drink a couple of small glasses a week. Pregnancy is stressful enough without beating yourself up over everything you eat. As long as you check that everything you eat is fresh, you would be mighty unlucky to have anything go wrong.

DD is three months old and really healthy btw.

In theory every food could be dangerous - I thought DP was nuts when he informed me we wouldn't be getting cucumber for a while before I realised why.

As a few have said if you eat pasturised supermarket brie it's not a problem - no need to deprive yourself. When pregnant I looked up listeria cases in the UK over the last 10 years or so. The majority seemed to be associated with hospital sandwiches! No brie cases I could find.

Ah, balls to The Rules! I ate sashimi when pg with DC1 and have eaten unpasteurised cheese a few times now I'm pg again. I drink coffee when I want it and never even realised that some people raise an eyebrow at shell fish or rare steak until a friend did the other day. Don't like pate anyway (bleurgh, meat splodge).

DH works in a posh supermarket and brings home salads that are on their BB date on Friday night and then I take them to work on Monday for lunch. I LOVE winding up my paranoid pg friend about what I'm eating; she won't even use face cream with vit A in whilst pg!

I have barely drunk alcohol at all though. I don't really do moderation; I'm an all or nothing kinda lass when it comes to wine!

icravecheese - totally right. I'm pregnant and living in France at the moment. I was given a (long) list of foods I cannot eat. There is a lot more of what we can't eat over here than in the UK because there is a fair amount of food/cuisine that uses unpasturised milk, uncooked egg whites, uncooked meats etc as well as the French determination to never cook meat to 'well done'.

At the beginning of the pregnancy I got tested for toxoplasmosis. As I tested negative, I have monthly blood tests for it. One month, because I had an upset stomach, I had to have two blood tests...!

Salad out of the home, where the level of washing cannot be verified, is totally out too, as are preprepared sandwiches and anything else in delis... It's not that French woman are strict with themselves, they are strongly advised not to eat (a lot) of foods.

My MIL (French) will not serve me salad. She makes salad for the whole family and will make boiled veggies for me, because she wants to make sure that I'm eating 'properly' and won't get ill. She did, however, tell me, "Don't worry about alcohol. A little bit now and again won't do any harm." She's tea-total!

Back to the brie, and as long as it says that it is pasturised, it should be ok. That is the 'rule' over here.

Sorry, am not computer savy enough to do the link but Zoe Williams of the Guardian wrote a great article about all of this in 2009(?). You can find it if you google Zoe Williams + Guardian + pregnancy i think. From what I remember, there have been 2 cases of listeria in the last 10 years in the UK so risks are completely exaggerated. However we should be more aware of toxoplasmosis risks.

Am 13 weeks. Today I have consumed, amongst other things (obviously) a large goats cheese and caramelised onion ciabatta and two large white wine spritzers. Does that make me evil...?
I am also very fit and eat a very balanced diet generally, as well as currently taking vits. My reasoning is, if it all goes tits up over a bit of cheese and / or wine it's going to go tits up regardless.

I also craved brie and pate while pg with DD1. Resisted for 9 months, but asked DH to get some in for when I came home. He did. I ate them. I then fell down the stairs, carrying a cup of coffee 10 mins later and had to have 10 stitches in my leg, 5 days after an EMCS.
Now I'm not saying those foods are dangerous...but...anecdotal evidence anyone?

Pmsl @ pippity

How would you know if you had caught listeria or toxoplasmois? This thread has made me totally paranoid - i eat salad from bags, i have had salads from the counter where you help yourself at morrisons, been for a couple of carveries, get ham salad sandwiches made up from the deli and i had runny scrambled eggs with smoked salmon for breakfast in a posh cafe the other day. I thought i was being quite healthy now im worried ive been eating all sorts of germs.

I was violently ill when I ate an oyster at 20 weeks pg with DD1. I ended up in hospital, needless to say I hadn't really take the warnings seriously until then!

I remember that Zoe Williams article. It was a bit competitive blaséness, iirc.

According to this 17 pregnant women contracted listeriosis in 2010. According to the same NHS page, around 22% of pregnancy-related cases of listeriosis will result in the death of the baby, either in utero or shortly after birth.

So it's uncommon, but not exactly unheard of.

Cheers Love!
Itsy, if you are genuinely concerned, your GP should do a test. Mine did when I discovered my cat had worms, even tho' I didnt touch poo.

I really missed wine, toward the end of my pregnancy I got into eating foods made with wine (but the actual alcohol content is heated off so it's not actually alcoholic IYSWIM).

Poached pears in red wine was my favourite mmmmm

Heston Blumenthal recipe for poached pears in wine

Very simple version in case you who don't fancy poncing about with star anise etc

Yum!!!!

WRT to cheese it's one of those low risk - high impact things.

In other words, it's very unlikely to happen, bt if it does the result could be catastrophic.

It's just not worth the risk IMO.

Or to put it another way, if the chances of getting lysteria from cheese are say 1 in a million, if we all eat cheese we know 1 baby will get it, but probably not ours. However if we all stop choose to stop eating cheese, then we are in effect all protecting that 1 baby, whoever it might have been.

It's a no brainer IMO, and I love cheese! But it's really not that hard to abstain for a few months, is it?

Sorry for the delayed response, funnily enough i was actually in Troyes holding a french regional meeting with my country team.

Peanuts were a no no then, now the law has been changed. It was one of the most serious things you were warned not to eat. I had ds1 in 2005.

Most of the time the research is still ongoing. Which is why it's not always relevant.

I wpuld disagree with the French being obsessive about being healthy. They are obsessive about being slim, and that is an entirely different matter.

My area manager and Paris store manager laughed at me when i asked if they gave up red wine, pate and cheese during pregnancy yesterday. They, she said, eat smaller amounts but no they consider their food fresh, and are fussier about the source, freshness and cooking. tbh they probably eat smaller amounts than us anyway.

It wasn't a stereotype, just general curiosity. My curiosity has been satisfied now though as i've had the opportunity to speak to 5 or 6 french mums and dads at dinner yesterday evening.....

And sorry for hijacking your post op, hope you got some kind of satisfaction!

I have a Swiss colleague who is 8.5 months pregnant coming for a bbq tomorrow so I'll be asking the same questions out of curiosity as to whst the Swiss gov guidelines are, as I may ttc while living here.

Deep sympathy. first thing i did when i got home from hospital was get the brie, pate and cava out. I'm not lying when I say it was better than sex, and i don't say that about chocolate.

I just wanted to dip in briefly and give my twopence worth.. Rant alert! There are so many conflicting rules that it makes my head hurt. The research is all ongoing, and is not definitive and sometimes I feel as if I were to follow the 'rules' perfectly I would be on dry toast only for the entire pregnancy. I am currently 10 weeks pregnant, and can say categorically that in spite of all these rules, should you have a miscarriage the medical professionals WILL SAY, "nothing you could have done. Not your fault. No need to blame yourself..." All the 'rules' do for you is give you a weapon to beat yourself up with. I've had two miscarriages and I find it deeply ironic that all these rules get bandied about, and then when the worst happens the doctors say, "Rules..? What rules? It's just bad luck. Try again, should be fine."

And breathe. My take is that using common sense is a wonderful thing. None of us eat rancid food with or without pregnancy. I have never had food poisoning, and do not intend to get it now. Simple food hygiene and a little common sense are all you need in my opinion.

Have we talked about whippy ice cream yet? Last time I didn't touch any of it. This time I forgot and had soft ice cream at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. But it's only the diseased Mr Whippy van ice cream, isn't it? What about a Mcflurry in case one happens to jump into my hands while walking past McDonalds?