Interesting article from the Guardian on pregnancy guidelines

[bumperlicious]

Here. Not trying to be controversial , though feel free to debate away! Just though it might interest some people.

Excellent letter in the Guardian pointing out that to be consistent, the Govt should be banning drink driving completely as the risks of having an accident are higher than the risk of harming a baby as a result of moderate (legal) drinking

pmsl at that microbiologist's letter eemie, really put that dreadful rent-a-gob in her place. all she did for her piece was call one doctor, that's hardly well-researched. i heard zoe williams on womens' hour the other day getting all hot and bothered about her 'evidence' in teh face of a somewhat impassive government health advisor. btw, since when did the govt have to be fair and equitable? it's an easy health message, those who wish to ignore it can do so if they wish, like all the other govt health messages.

williams also said on WH, (and i feel this is most telling) 'it's bad enough being pregnant without being told we can't drink at all!'.
if that's your attitude, fine, but i'm more inclined to go along with the Foetal Alcohol Association woman on the letters page. i had a friend with an adopted brother with this syndrome and it blighted his life (before he died of a heroin overdose) and my cousin's wife's baby nearly died after listeria brought on contractions and she wsa born two and a half months early.

I liked her article because in spirit, even if not in absolute fact (have read microbiologist's letter too), I think she is right. There is a great deal of worrying about what pregnant women do or do not do that seems generally out of proportion to the risks.
When you consider what really contributes to prenatal and neonatal damage, like...crap care in hospitals, domestic violence, poor maternal diet in the first place, - whether or not a woman has a couple of glasses of wine a week whilst pregnant seems fairly insignificant though much easier to address (glibly).
Watching CSI NY last night (o the shame) - the criminal was instantly diagnosed as having suffered from violent impulses due to FAS. If you haven't actually read anything about FAS, you could be forgiven for believing that if your drink anything, your child is going to end up a brutal psychotic murderer. Insidious and very worrying imo that this is an idea making itself known on mainstream tv.

i remember when my doc was talking about amnioscentesis (we didn't have it, i didn't want it) and he was going through the risks. in his hospital, he said, he'd lost one pregnancy in three years and done hundreds of amnios, so therefore you could read it as a one in some hundreds chance.
or you could have the one in ten that's oft-quoted. BUT, he said, it's really a one in two chance, in that it's either going to happen or it's not. mathematically that's not correct, but stats refer to populations, not individuals. if my cousin's baby had died of listeria, she'd have made the causal connection between her going to a barbeque and eating some contaminated salad and her child dying for the rest of her life. so i suppose that's the attitude that informs my attitude to what i do with my body when i'm pregnant.

Pruuni, I noticed that on CSI. I said to my DH that I thought it was part of the american propaganda that only evil women drink during pregnancy.

Aitch I think that's wrong. If it happens to you, it is a 100% probability.

oh yes, of course, in retrospect it is. i think he just meant 50/50 in that either something bad will happen or it won't. that's certainly how i felt when i was told after my first ectopic pregnancy that i had a one in ten chance of having another. who cares about the gen pop, i was either goiing to have one or i wasn't. it would happen to me either way. (which it did, by the way... ).

it's like you can't be a little bit pregnant. well, if you get listeria, no matter how unlikely you were to get it, then your baby is now in big danger and you and that scabby lettuce leaf have caused it. now, you can say the same thing about getting in a car, but we have normalised those dangers in our society.

I like Zoe Williams.

I think the problem is that if you are the Foetal Alcohol Syndrome Association then FAS IS your number one issue so it's understandable that they preach total abstinence.

However, it is noticeable that all the cases I have ever heard of or read about involve babies who have been adopted where it is clear the mother was totally out of control on alcohol. I really really haven't heard of a case where a woman who was drinking say a unit or two per week and was otherwise living normally and healthily went on to have a child with FAS. They can't rule out the risk, of course, but that is in the nature of science - you can't say with 100% certainty that a low level of alcohol consumption is safe even though basically there is no evidence that a unit or two is harmful. So the "easiest" way to deal with this slightly uncomfortable fact is to suggest total abstinence. As it's pg women on the receiving end, they are perceived as fair game.

On the other hand there is evidence that any level of alcohol in the blood is detrimental to driving and contributes to traffic accidents but no one would dare to suggest total abstinence to the general public because that would be outrageous and a restriction on liberties

what about the rather famous slogan 'don't drink and drive'? is that not suggesting of total abstinence?
the worst drink drivers nowadays are in the 17-25 age bracket, i think we really should go for a full abstinence message on drinking and driving, i'd have no problem with that.

I don't think it's true that the worst drink drivers are 17-25. The worst ones are still older people, 50+, who used to d+d before the campaigns which my generation grew up with. 17-25's are the ones who have the biggest increase, but that is from a lower base, IYSWIM.

And the thing is Aitch, you may not mind the total abstinence message, but a lot of people would tut and say "FGS, are we to be further infantilised by this govt?" and be annoyed about it. And the govt is far more careful about annoying the general population, than the pregnant female one.

i'm pretty sure that they said that on r4 the other day, tbh. they said that everyone perceived the old gimmers as being teh worst but the problem was worse with the young 'uns. it was a talking head journalist though, so he may have been wrong. (he may, for example, have only phoned one source and quoted from that, a la Williams.)

so 'don't drink and drive' was not an abstinence slogan then?

i know that i shouldn't drive if i have a drink. i can feel the effects immediately. there must be others like me, i'm sure. so in order to protect you and your children from drunk drivers you need us off the road, tbh.

The problem's worse with the young'uns in that they're the most rapidly growing group and they are now forming their driving behaviour which will last for the rest of their motoring lives. The old gimmers aren't as important because although there are more of them, they are dying anyway (or reaching the age when they are having to do re-tests/ having their licences taken away from them)

That 17-25 group are so important because they are future drivers. Most of my generation (I'm 41) don't drink at all when they drive, and that's because their drink / drive habits were formed at the height of that brilliantly successful campaign. It just shows the importance of maintaining a message and re-stating it to a new generation, which the govt failed to do, hence the current problem.

Don't drink and drive I think emphatically was an abstinence message, but only on the basis that this is the easiest thing to do (because you don't have to worry about whether you'll go over the limit), rather than because it was the law.

Me too, I never drink and drive. I would be dangerous with a legal amount of alcohol in my blood, I'm sure.

all i'm saying is that the govt (or at least previous ones) have gone hard-core on the drink driving thing. like you, 'don't drink and drive' really sunk in with me.
if it's an issue that you have with this government then that's fine, but people keep advancing the notion that because Labour aren't saying 'don't drink and drive' they shouldn't be proposing total abstinence for pregnant women and i just am not seeing the causal connection between the two things, tbh. the govt isn't infantilising women, it's not a law, we're still free to do what we wish but as a general easy message it's a good one i think.

plus i think zoe williams is dreadful and made a right fool of herself on WH, har har.

I'm with Aitch on this one.

I remember seeing various (print and TV) ads from that campaign around the beginning of the 80s, when I was 4 or 5 or so. Of course I didn't know that 'drink' meant 'alcohol' and thought it could cause terrible accidents if you had a bottle of water in the car...

I'm with Aitch on this, I think, although I haven't been totally abstinent in this pg or with ds - have had one small glass every few weeks. But OTOH I'm also with Pruni. And I'm worrying about having had a sprinkling of chives on a restaurant meal the other day and not knowing whether they were washed. Listeria is one thing that utterly, utterly terrifies me.

Hmm, I think the difference is that with drinking and driving there's no doubt that it's a bad thing for many people.

Whereas with drinking while pregnant, there is no evidence at all that it is a bad thing for anyone who does it in moderation (all the evidence re FAS is that there is a genetic component plus extremely heavy drinking). And most women don't even do it in moderation in pregnancy, they do it incredibly lightly. We might be talking about 4 glasses of wine in the whole course of a pregnancy, for which they will be held up to public vilification for no good reason, thanks to the govt's blanket (unresearched) guidelines.

Six foot men who have a pint of beer before driving a car are not criticised for it (and tbh why should they be, they probably are safe to drink and drive). But any woman will be open to the pregnancy police bearing down on her if she has a half a glass of chardonnay when six months pregnant. I don't think you can ignore the mysogyny which is a proud part of our inheritance when considering the different effects of guidelines for different groups.

Blimey it would never have occured to me that you can get listeria from chives.

I know, but it goes in salad doesn't it? No, this is me being rather silly. In my defence it has not been an easy pg so far. Roll on Sept.

but here's the thing... if right-thinking women decide to have a glass of wine at a wedding or whatever (presuming that other drinking, if any, will be done at home so the opportunity for public drinking is fairly limited while you have a big bump and are permanently knackered) then they'll no doubt be surrounded by their peers who will no doubt know that the message is not as simple as at first it appears.

seems to me that you're complaining that the government is assuming that people are dafter than they might be, but if they are then so are you.
i had a couple of glasses of wine in public while pregnant, one at my brother's wedding and the other at a barbeque. didn't feel any disapproval whatsoever. would have done if i'd had more than that, probably, and that would have been fair enough tbh.