Glass of wine on Chrismas day.

[LucyB1]

Hi, I'm going to be 12+5 on Christmas day and i am absolutely GAGGING for a glass of red. Is that really bad cause I'm not quite out of the first trimester??

I completely agree with Msvee on this one.

Plus, a few Posters are saying yes but you risk your health and babies by other things such as this and that etc...
Yes of course we do - so why add something to the list??

Getting pregnant and carrying a baby is a miracle. Its amazing. and You only have to sacrifice for 9 months - I'm not judging anyone - or telling anyone not to, and I definitely don't want to argue ! - I'm just saying it completely baffles me, and I really don't understand why - I just don't think I would be able to have a glass myself without feeling overwhelming guilt so for me it just wouldn't be worth it.

I guess I'm just over-sensitive on these subjects due to too many miscarriages and would give the world for a healthy pregnancy. God forbid anything ever went wrong - like with many women, you look back on what you did and you blame yourself for everything! Even though it probably had nothing to do with it - you still blame yourself - I feel all of that outweighs 5 minutes with a glass of wine.

I don't think one small glass would actually do any harm.
It's just whether the pros outweigh the cons for you I guess.
For me the cons outweigh the pros.
x

Charlotte, the argument isn't that people can't go without, it's that if there is no reason not to go without then why do it? As a pp stated, there is no evidence that all sorts of things are safe e.g eating apples but no one suggests you avoid them!

Several studies are cited in the book I mentioned before (Expecting Better). That has all the proper references I'm the index but I don't have it to hand, however, the author looked at a wide range of international trials and the conclusions were compelling. The one study that showed harm to the babies in the 'moderate drinking mother' category also found that the women in this category were 48% more likely to be cocaine users as well, which obviously skewed the results!

I agree that wine in France is more likely to be 9%ish rather than 13/14% which you see a lot here. Don't know how much difference that makes when we are talking single occasional glasses though?

Parenthood, this is what upsets me - women feeling guilt and despair and examining themselves to see what they did wrong when in fact they have not engaged in risky behaviour but have been subject to scaremongering and misinformation.

Why don't they advise Guiness anymore? Drinks companies decided to put the warnings on their bottles against drinking in pregnancy to protect themselves against legal action lest someone hold them accountable for their binge drinking. It doesn't mean small amounts aren't safe

Regarding mothers drinking in France see this report:

here

Quote from this report:

"France, with its longstanding tradition as a wine drinking country, has led the way with an example of good practice.
Since October 2006, the French Code of Public Health requires a warning label on alcohol packaging: “Consumption
of alcoholic beverages during pregnancy even in small amounts can seriously damage the child’s health.” 37 The
warning is accompanied by an easy to grasp visual logo (see Figure 5)."

Have a small one with food and savour it.

But that warning is on alcohol here as well and clearly pregnant women do still drink. Has it actually changed behaviour in France? Is there any evidence that French children born prior to 2006 have a higher incidence of learning difficulties etc than children in teetotal countries?

I've only read the first page and the comments that stood out were - 'one glass can't hurt can it?

And 'the midwife said a glass of wine was ok with a full belly'

Actually we don't know what harm alcohol actually does on a glass to glass basis because we can't research it, we do know regular alcohol when pregnant can chase huge problems though. Just because there isn't evidence on occasional drinking doesn't mean its ok to do it.

What may affect one baby, mightn't another. It's known that alcohol kills developing brain cells, so if anything it's worse earlier on in pregnancy.

The last update we had on alcohol and advice was - don't drink at all. Then the specialist showed us a video - a baby in utero of a mum who hadn't anything to drink, and the comparison of a baby In utero who's mum had a few glasses of wine. This baby was making jerking movements. It wasn't nice to watch.

I think the problem is NICE guidance says you can have 1-2 units a week, this leads mums to believe its ok, when in fact we don't know its ok. I tell mums at booking the only way to guarantee your baby isn't affected by alcohol is to refrain. That said, their body their choice.

well Ive got HG so I have whatever I fancy and can keep down - including tiramisu laced with marsala wine.. a few slurps of DH ice cold bottled beer.. and tonic water imagining the gin

never was a sloppy cheese/seafood eater so no skin off my nose to avoid

for Christmas I will slug a little chocolate baileys into a tiny glass, maybe a smidge of port. will be 26 weeks

My MIL was a v experienced MW and follows the everything in moderation mindset, our continental neighbours quaff far more than us and have less heart attacks.. the real dangers are the crappy diety food and fake sugar...... have never washed salad leaves or fruit in my life either.
do what you want to do, and enjoy yourselves.

See this response to "Expecting Better". This book is not without criticism

here

I agree with what Flat says above

And this link

I agree, no studies/books/recommendations etc are without criticism, we all just have to make the best informed decisions we can. What stood out to me from Flat's post was that the in utero video compared a foetus where the mother drank nothing to one where she drank several glasses - so presumably they couldn't show adverse effects from a mother who drank a smaller amount?

I don't want to sound like a midwife who you've all described a few pages back btw I'm all for choice, and so long as mums know the potential risks then its their choice.

Personally with my last baby I didn't drink a drop. I'd had 3 miscarriages and just didn't want to blame myself if anything went wrong, its bad enough without thinking 'could I have done something to avoid it'. I already have premature baby's so also wouldn't want to take this risk. On top of this I once looked after a baby who's mum drank a few units every day / every other day and I'll never forget the high pitched scream. It was awful. As I said before, what may affect some baby's may not others. I get that argh feeling when people say 'oh my mum drank throughout pregnancy with me, I'm ok' that's not evidence. Its anecdotal. Again, you may be ok.

My mum drank throughout all her pregnancies with us - GP told her to have Guinness to help iron stores! I blame my shortness on this but seriously, with my sister she had a placental abruption at 34/40 and pushed her out in theatre where they were just about to put her under a GA. They were both very lucky.

this report is interesting and explains why Oster's conclusions are not correct.

The criticisms of Oster's book seem to be from well reputed scientific researchers in the field.

I'm not sure your presumption is correct - if the video is the same on I saw ( ref back to advice for midwives link up page) IIRC the baby affected by the jumpy spasms was one where a mother had a couple of drinks per week. All the research agrees that the less alcohol you consume the lower the risk of adverse effects is, but no one actually knows where the cut-off "safe" limit is and from twin studies, it is likely that this "safe" limit will vary depending on the genetic make up of the fetus.

The thing I always thought was that if I drank tiny sips of one small glass of wine (no pub measures!!) with dinner, over 2+ hours, then the amount of alcohol in my bloodstream at any one time must have been tiny? I never felt remotely merry because I wasn't!

At the time the guidelines were a glass once or twice a week. To my knowledge there has been no new research since then and the advice was changed mainly on the basis that women don't understand what a unit looks like

Well that criticism of the book says that heroin and coke are both better than alcohol (although not referencing quantities involved). I'd like some pretty good supporting evidence for such a statement and cannot, unfortunately, find the report they cite online.

They also say you shouldn't drink when breastfeeding, which is known to be inaccurate (small amounts, correctly timed, are no problem at all).

Having had a look through that website, it's rather patronising isn't it? Men with stuff stuffed up their jumpers 'pausing' to remind women that it's only 9 months? I think we know how long a pregnancy is. Neat vodka poured on an egg to illustrate something or other.

Chunderella. The TV programme I saw featured Mukherjee but the several links to academic/research web pages that I have posted are not his but say very similar things.

I've just had a scan of that article. They are talking about one drink per day as the low drinking. That's, what, 10 units a week minimum. I wouldn't drink every day. I am talking about maybe 4 units a month. There is a massive difference and almost all the articles on this seem to treat 'moderate' or 'low' drinking as what I'd call more like pretty heavy drinking!

when my mum was pregnant with me,her doctor advised her to cut down from smoking 10 cigs a day to 5 and when drinking, drink beer / wine instead of spirits

this was only in 1979 !!

(but i am fine so far!)

Yes Penguin but the point is ( In true QI fashion) that nobody knows where the "zero harm" point is and it is likely to be different for different fetuses.

The research on scanning fetuses was based on those only having a couple of drinks a week. The latest article I linked (ref 1 drink a day) was about the amounts producing full blown Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. That's much less than commonly assumed for full-blown FAS. More subtle effects (sometimes called Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) can be caused by less alcohol that that needed to produce FAS.

Obviously more research is needed and it may be proved that 4 units a month is OK for every fetus always - but this hasn't been proved yet. We know that some amounts of alcohol adversely affect some fetuses ( and some more than others) and that lesser amounts of alcohol than previously thought can still have effects so where would you draw the cut off line and on what basis?

That was exactly my point earlier in the thread Arti. There are many, many things that haven't been proven to be zero harm. We don't generally work on the assumption that zero harm has to be proved. If it did, we would all give up wearing make-up, using deodorant, using toiletries, using cleaning products other than lemon juice and white vinegar...

Even that study earlier lumped together up to 6 units a week into it's sample.

The startle reflex scan research (see advice for midwives and birthpsychology.com/free-article/research-information-parents this link for summary, shows that between 1-4 units of alcohol a week does affect the nerve development of fetus. Some mothers in the study who's fetuses were affected were only drinking 1 unit a week.

Chunderella - the links I provided have a lot of evidence based research.

I'm sorry, but this is an organisation who say alcohol is worse than heroin and think a good tactic is to pose in stations with men with stuffed jumpers to remind women how selfish they are being not 'pausing' for 9 months. I don't think I'm going to spend any more time on their website.