Little amounts of alcohol during pregnancy

[Cherry85]

During my first pregnancy I never drank at all. I have friends with 2 or 3 kids who have enjoyed the occasional glass of wine throughout pregnancy and my midwife also says that's fine..... but we are out for dinner on Saturday for a friend's birthday and I am really craving a cocktail.

Would one cocktail be an issue as opposed to a glass of wine?

17 weeks if that makes any difference

100a% agree with this

It would be the same baby.

This. We know the effects of alcohol on growing babies, and even if small amounts don’t have as much an effect, is it really worth the risk when you could just have a mocktail?

Drinking moderately whilst breastfeeding is fine and totally different to drinking moderately during pregnancy.

A one off cocktail will be fine. As would an occasional glass of wine or whatever is your preference. Most of my friends had a drink every now and then and our children are fine. My DS is in the middle of a PhD and DD has finals in a few weeks so there has been no lasting impact.

For obvious reasons it not something easily or ethically researched, so to err on the side of caution is to say no amount is safe, but that does not directly equate that a small amount is not safe, it’s just an arbitrary line in the sand that’s easy for everyone to understand.

OP, read Expecting Better by Emily Oster and draw your own conclusions. She’s a statistical analyst who looks at actual research and studies of things like caffeine and alcohol consumption and all the other things Pregnant Women are dictated to about and presents them very sensibly.

A lot of people were binge drinking at the most important time of fetal development because they didn't know they were pregnant. Have a cocktail if you want one.

A midwife in my Trust got absolutely pissed at her baby shower when she was having twins. She was like 8 months pregnant or so, they were fine.

Hard no from me.

Why ask randoms on Mumsnet? Go to the website of foetal alcohol syndrome and get proper advice

I'd say the same to a non pregnant person about alcohol. There is no legitimate reason to want to put a known poison in your body.

I'm saying this also, from the perspective of a person who knows all this but sadly continues to imbibe alcohol.

There is literally not 1 good thing that comes from drinking alcohol, not 1 but we continue to do so.

Pfft. You've never seen my dance moves after a few bicardis.

There's a very legitimate reason: I like it and I want to.

I had a cryptic pregnancy, found out at 27 weeks. I found out at the end of September 2012 following a summer of drinking at music festivals, “big” birthdays, BBQs, the Euros, and the August bank holiday 🤦🏻‍♀️ I had no symptoms, wasn’t “showing”, and usually had irregular periods thanks to PCOS.
I only found out because I did a test after I had a real urge to eat gherkins dipped in marmite for my breakfast and my boyfriend (now husband) made a joke about that being a “pregnant woman’s craving”.

I was absolutely terrified that I’d damaged my baby. Luckily, she turned out absolutely fine. Except she told me the other day that she’s gone off cheese and onion crisps, which is completely unacceptable.

It’s not something I would ever willingly do because the anxiety I had throughout the rest of my pregnancy, and after birth, was not something I want to go through again.

Fair enough...great response

Emily Oster‘s take is quite controversial… https://depts.washington.edu/fasdpn/pdfs/astley-oster2013.pdf

really, drinking (semi-) regularly is a gamble. One single glass has most likely no effect but binge drinking on one occasion or regular consume definitely can hurt the foetus. It all comes down to probability and the individual. There are twins in which one twin has FASD and the other doesn’t. We have - and this includes the moms to be - no way of knowing whether the mothers consumption affects the respective foetus or not.

Osters Advice is particularly harmful because it does not acknowledge individual susceptibility but offers a blank general statement of „regular low level consumption is fine“.

1. she can’t say that as each woman and foetus are different with respective susceptibility
2. low level is understood by many women differently than her/the academic definition

@ImisschampagneBut the OP is asking about one single drink, not drinking one a day or even semi-regularly, so my advice to read it still stands.

There is no precise science. Even in the study you shared there’s no way to know that the self-reporting is accurate.

It stands though that one single drink enjoyed slowly with a meal will not cause FAS. If the OP wanted to play even safer she could ask for it to be made weaker than normal.

That’s why I said - one single drink likely has no effect.

i would never say no effect, because you never know in medicine and you can’t say the chance is 0, that’s what an FASD specialist once told me. But very very very unlikely.

I know Brits are big drinkers but I'm shocked at their attitude to drinking during pregnancy. You know people in other countries don't carry on drinking when they are pregnant right? It's fucked.

No amount of alcohol in pregnancy is safe. It is not yet understood how things like FASD are caused, and whether it’s the quantity, frequency, or timing of consuming alcohol. Lots of people drink and have healthy babies, but lots of people drink and don’t. Many people stop drinking when finding out they’re pregnant but the damage has already been done.

The potential impacts however are huge, and absolutely not worth the risk.

Try a mocktail - lots can be made with alcohol free spirits rather than just flavours and mixers, so they’ve definitely become elevated in the last 5 years. You can get alcohol free gin and tonics, as well as beers, ciders, Proseccos and wines.

The thing is, we don't actually know if the higher rates of consumption are related to higher rates of FAS because FAS is underdiagnosed, especially when you compare different countries where awareness and diagnosis can differ greatly.

So potentially, we can have lots of women who drink a very small amount in pregnancy and therefore count towards the overall high percentage of women who drink during pregnancy.

It could also look like we have a high rate of FAS because we are relatively aware and have the means to diagnose relatively early when we consider all countries.

But if we could really diagnose everyone who has FAS in the world, we might see a different trend where it's purely related to honest alcohol consumption during pregnancy and perhaps some genetic tendency which makes some people more likely to have a baby with FAS if they drink.

British women don’t just carry on drinking during pregnancy. Most people are going to be teetotal or very close to, bar one glass of champagne at a wedding or similar.

People are just arguing one drink isn’t going to cause any harm, which is different to advocating regular drinking.