is anyone having the odd glass of wine?

[daisystone]

When I found out I was pregnant I stopped drinking immediately and then the morning sickness kicked in and the thought of alcohol sent me running to the loo.

However, now I am over that (thank the Lord!!) and although I am still not drinking per se, I have had a glass of Champagne, two coronas and a glass of red wine spaced over about 11 weeks.

The NHS say that one or two units once or twice a week is acceptable but obviously a lot of people think it is a big no no anyway.

I am interested in what other people are doing and if they feel guilty if they have the odd glass of wine.

i just read something worrying, 'you don't get boozy milk'
you do, alcohol goes into the milk, same as caffeine, if you don't count unit and wait enough till breastfeeding you will be giving alcohol to your child, who does not have a liver that can proccess it, that is a fact, please don't do it.

I'm saving myself for after DC2 is born as one just isn't enough! Mind you DH keeps saying I'll be a cheap date once we do have a drink as with DS1 I felt totally woozy after just one glass of champers!!!

I'm 30 weeks and have been having the odd drink all the way along if and when I felt like it. I find I taste and savour every mouthful so much more than before (when one was often one of more......) On a Friday eve I have a weak G&T with ice and lemon and it is the best thing ever, but equally there can be weeks where I haven't. I too loathe this infantalisation of women. We were on holiday in Portugal last month and decided to order a bottle of wine one night (other nights, DH ordered by the glass). I was a bit worried about funny looks/odd comments, but they were more funny about why I was refusing top-ups after my one glass (DH rather enjoyed the rest of the bottle...)

My DH was all up for not drinking himself to "support me" throughout the pregnancy (our first) but I think he's quite glad I am happy to have a drink if I feel like it and that I think he should do the same. Cutting back has helped both of us sleep better and lose weight though!

I wouldn?t judge anyone for drinking in moderation while PG but I haven?t had a drop myself. I wasn?t a big drinker before I was PG anyway, it?s just not that appealing to me these days for some reason. For me it makes sense to abstain; after all alcohol is (technically) a poison so it?s logical to my mind that it would carry a degree of risk.

There are reports every day about red wine being good and then another saying it?s bad, everyone?s body is so different that surely you cannot have a black and white answer to if it?s good or bad. I read an interesting couple of articles in new scientist a while ago on the subject. The conclusion is that red wine is both beneficial and unbeneficial; under 60 it does more harm than good to your heart when consumed every day but over 60 the risk of damage is outweighed by the risk of a heart attack and thus the red wine helps stave off the heart attack to a degree.

In the end it?s about informed individual choices.

Articles ?

Alcohol during pregnancy chemically alters fetal DNA

Alcohol in pregnancy may give kids a taste for booze

What?s your poison?

what a surprise, the statistics lobby have now come on!!!!

this started off quite sensibly but now we have the fearmongers on

"So if 1-3 units a week leads to:
9% increased risk of placenta conditions
24% increased risk of childhood leukaemia
10% increased risk of cognitive and socioemotional development at age 3

BLA BLA BLA

sorry, but not interested in fearmongering stats from some website. for every stat, there is one that says the opposite!!!!

if you want to abstain, fine! but keep the bullshit stats to yourself please

porcamiseria that's a bit fingers in ears la la la.

DBennett - wasn't ramming stats down throats, the post was impartial if you read it.

e.g. "for example, this might not be enough for a mother to want to change her behaviour.
But can you see why a government might be interested in promoting it to all mothers. "

If on MN someone had started a thread saying they crave smoking when pregnant and just need them to relax, i doubt there would be 6 pages of encouragement from other people to continue - they would get flamed. So i find it shocking to read that most of the people on this thread saying its ok to expose their unborn baby to alcohol! Why is it not as unacceptable as smoking? You wouldnt give a newborn baby alcohol so why give it to your unborn one?

@ Baggedand Tagged.
Actually the RCOG have advice on this.

"Based on the best evidence to date, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommends that the only way to be absolutely certain that your baby is not harmed by alcohol is not to drink at all during pregnancy or while you are trying for a baby."

@porcamiseria

The links I posted were to the researc papers themselves.
And the WHO.

And there is no plausable reason to think alcohol is beneficial during pregnancy.
And a paucity of research that would suggest that.

The risks are small, but they are there.
And your distrust of statistics doesn't change that.

Again, my posts were aimed solely at disabusing the notion that the "have none" government guidance was in some ways an overreaction or not evidence based.

It's more complicated than that.

A government has to think about population nased risk.
A mother doesn't.

So one can be sensible to make a guideline.
And the other can be sensible to ignore it.

Didn't drink for the first trimester, did later on, more so in the last couple of months. Of course it's later on that you get the judgy judgy looks.

As for smoking - I think smoking generally is less socially acceptable. You can't smoke next to someone without blowing it in their face, but you can have a drink without affecting other people (unless of course you're blind drunk and anti-social, but that's a different argument). Personally I don't really care if other pregnant women smoke like a chimney. Each to their own, I say.

for every article that says it causes harm, there is one that says that minimal drinking does not... so who do you beleive?

again if people dont want to drink, fine by me! your life, I dont care! your life

but why come on here scaremongering?? I could paste some link the the opposite. In fact I will now as am, annoyed by the prechyness

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071113195132.htm
www.timesonline. co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3365637.ece

I am not condoning binge drinking. But given that many many sources say that a few units is fine, so not just let it lie and poke your nose somewhere else

I had my DC3 5 months ago in France. During my pregnancy I haven't heard a single medic encouraging me to have the odd drink. Infact all doctors and midwives have been very clear in their message: abstain from drinking alcohol during pregnancy. Quite refreshingly though the last hospital midwife I saw prior to giving birth admitted to having consumed more champagne whilst expecting her son than before or after although she did say she rarely touched alcohol normally . For this pregnancy I decided to hold off drinking mainly because I had had a miscarriage before and at the ripe old ago of 40 I didn't want to take any chances. If the truth be told I didn't really miss it - more the idea of it. However during my second pregnancy I did drink from time to time especially as I got married when 8 months pregnant so a glass or two of champagne seemed essential!

Now coffee.... that's another story. I had to have a good cuppa once a day from 18 weeks pregnant and continue to have one whilst breastfeeding. My LO doesn't seem to mind .....

Sorry for waffling. I guess my point is that one always hears that France is very open about alcohol but it certainly doesn't seem to be the case for pregnant women. Oh yeah: they take pregnancy VERY seriously in France.

jardins, i think the accepted level of caffeine is about two mugs a day and a bit of chocolate, adjust as needed a lot of chocolate less coffee, so you are well within the limits, i wouldn't worry. i reaaaaaally need my coffee so i switched to decaffeinated, it's been two months and a week since the birth and i hadn't bother to switch back yet.

I had two or three three glasses of wine in the whole time I was pregnant, none of which I finished. Two of the drinks were bought by the same woman, who insisted on buying me a drink to 'relax. We only saw her twice, so it was 100% of time we saw her.
Not very helpful really.
She told me that she had drunk a beer every night she was pregnant. She did have birth complications and her little girl has learning difficulties. She won't ever know if her drinking contributed to her little girl's problems.
Normally, I only drink when I go out, I don't like drinking at home, unless we have people round, so I didn't have to stop drinking. It is always going to be more difficult to cut back or stop when you have always had a couple of glasses a night with your meal or whatever.
Personally, I didn't think it was worth the risk.

I?m sure they take drinking in pregnancy very seriously in France but in times gone by when there wasn?t an emphasis anywhere on not drinking when pregnant I don?t think there are statistics to back up a greater amount of alcohol damaged children in France when women probably drank wine regularly with meals whilst in the UK there wasn?t that drinking wine regularly tradition by women that there is now.

@porcamiseria

The link you posted seems to correspond to this paper.
And you're right in that this review paper shows no increased risk with regards to some oucomes (miscarriage & stillbirth, growth masures, prematurity and birth defects including fetal alcohol syndrome).

However the paper supported the findings I linked to earlier regarding neurodelopmental outcome.

And your second link look at a study which doesnt look at alcohol directly, it's powered to look at so class.

Again, it's an individual choice.
But to pretend that a small risk doesn't exist is nothing to do with choice.

porcamiseria...this is a discussion forum; but if you don't agree with people's posts they can get lost.. is that right?

I don't see anyone scaremongering, just presenting a point of view for discussion.

The link you posted from science daily is based on past and varied studies so is rather random.

The times online one is a bit one sided and presented as fact.

Agreed that 'studies' are inconclusive and random on either side of the fence but if they stimulate debate then surely that's good?

The links I posted from NS are not about stats but about a study and possible similarities in humans. Food for thought rather than stating you should or shouldn't do this or that.

Booze in breastmilk: what evidence do you have for this? (Either that it comes through in significant quantities or doesn't) I haven't found any so far but would like to (still b/f my two year old).

I'm up the duff for third time (10 weeks) after a miscarriage at 9 weeks last time. I was quite relaxed about the one that miscarried (until it went wrong) and now I'm much more paranoid about booze and have only had a couple of halves in the interests of trying to conceal the pregnancy (I'm a keen drinker normally and my birthday was just after the positive test).

My view is that as the evidence so far suggests one unit every now and again in pregnancy is unlikely to do any harm, it should be up to the individual to choose whether to drink or not, especially if someone's just opened a very expensive bottle of red...

There is lots of info on breastmilk - a quick google...

How long does alcohol remain in breastmilk?

Alcohol and Breastfeeding

Estimated Time Until Zero Level of Alcohol in Breast Milk Calculator

nice link to that calculator, cherers haoshiji

haosh

I have not told anyone to get lost have i?

But its noticable that

people that have the odd drink dont tend to post links/data about it

people that dont drink a drop seem to want to take it upon themselves to post links about how dangerous it can be. why? I just dont get it. who are they trying to convert?

It lands as very preachy to me

if course there is a risk, but I have made the decision after reading stuff that its a risk I can live with

porcamiseria, it is your choice, and depends on how risk avert are you?
i am not very risky, i have health issues, waited to get pregnant until the doc stop saying it wasn't a good idea, it can all go very wrong...so ui took my precautions, and got preg when everything was optimal, wasn't gonna risk it over a beer...
but that's just me

"But its noticable that people that have the odd drink dont tend to post links/data about it"

This is an interesting point.

And all the evidence we have suggests most women drink during pregnancy.

Do you think this majority don't post links to studies because:

They don't think to provide data to back up such a popular opinion (in this thread we have maybe a 30-1 ratio of drinkers to not).

Do you think they have less trust in scientific evidence (possibly correlating with the putting aside of thoughts of risk)?

A good example of the latter is the handful of posters who were sceptical of the evidence behind the government guideline when it is a fairly clear attempt at managing population risk and uncertainty.

I think its because 1000s and 1000s of women go on to have healthy babies, and they drank during PG, not alot however

This sways me more that any article

Plus many of us are kids of the 70s/60s when our parents consumed shit loads!

prcamiseria you are so right, my mum is utterly amused by modern antenatal care, she explain to me what was it back them, when i reported all midwives app, you fall pregnant, nine months go by, you have a baby and hope for the best... can you imagine a health minister saying that nowadays?

porcamiseria ->

"poke your nose somewhere else"

"Plus many of us are kids of the 70s/60s when our parents consumed shit loads!"

One of the articles I posted was about - Alcohol in pregnancy may give kids a taste for booze.

in pregnancy may give kids a taste for booze

?Alcohol may taste sweeter if you were exposed to it before birth, suggests a study in rats. The findings may shed new light on why human studies have previously linked fetal alcohol exposure to increased alcohol abuse later in life, and to a lower age at which a person first starts drinking alcohol.?

Now I am not suggesting what we are discussing here will lead to alcohol abuse but an interesting correlation; a number of what could possibly be deemed as pro posts are also from people saying their mothers drank when they were in utero. Now that's interesting and has come out of this discussion.