Caffeine and pregnancy

[dk999]

Hello. First time mum here! I have read that it's safe to consume less than 200mg of caffeine per day. I drink 1 cup a day of coffee. Now I can feel baby she is kicking alot after I drink coffee so now I will switch to decaf. However just wondering if anyone knows if it has been safe for me to drink coffee ☕️ I am concerned I will have affected her brain development or something.

Thanks so much.

The Overthinker

The NHS advice is 200mg per day - 1 cup of coffee is less than that.

Hello! Well I stuck to the strict 200mg and had a misscarriage. The pregnancy were my 6 month old is sat playing on the floor. I just drank whatever caffeine. Just zero sugar drinks and no energy drinks etc.

I'm so sorry for your loss 😔 I guess there is no real right and wrong! Xx

I'd really recommend the book 'expecting better' by Emily Oster. She talks through the research on topics like this so makes it easier to make an informed decision. She doesn't advocate for doing anything one way or the other, she just explains the findings and she does give the view on what she decided to do in her pregnancy

I decided to go completely caffeine-free, stayed off coffee the whole time, but started to drink tea again towards the end of my pregnancy. I knew I was being over-cautious.

I couldn't stomach coffee for most of the first and second trimester, which is crazy cos I usually couldn't function without it! But when I have had it I've stuck to 1 cup (even sometimes 2 cups if I really needed it) a day. I'm 30 weeks and baby boy is perfect :) I don't think drinking caffeine alone could cause a miscarriage but I do think they tell you to limit it cause it's not fantastic for their little hearts if you're overdoing it.

1 cup a day is perfectly fine OP!

I went off tea and coffee till about 12 weeks with all four of my pregnancies. Then after that stage I had as many cups of tea as I wanted but limited my coffee to about 1 a day.

The guidelines are EXTREMELY cautious, if you read the actual science you'll see you have to a LOT of caffeine to cause issues.

You're fine to keep drinking your coffee, your baby is not kicking due to caffeine!

I dug the research when I was having DD (8 years ago). The studies the recommendations are based on were mostly done in rats, rule of thumb for drugs is generally that they take whatever dose causes issues in rats, scale for weight, and divide by 10, and call that the 'safe dose' for humans.

So basically, the 200mg per day in the NHS guidelines means that a giant rat that weighted as much as a human, would have issues with its babies at 2000mg per day.

I looked at the data and this is more than the dose that would make the same rat have issues when it wasn't pregnant.

Conclusion: unless you're consuming enough caffeine to make you physically ill, your baby will be fine.

You’ll be absolutely fine. I avoided caffeine throughout my first pregnancy as my anxiety was through the roof. Now heavily pregnant with my second and have a 2yo and I’m not sure I could function without coffee 😂