Can you drink while pregnant?
Because alcohol crosses the placenta to your baby, when you drink alcohol, so does your baby. Yes, really. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- Once upon a time, doctors thought the idea of taking a nutritional supplement to ward off a birth defect was laughable, and now every pregnant woman is clearly instructed to take folic acid (a B-vitamin) to prevent a very serious, neural tube defect called spina bifida.
- Drinking alcohol while you’re pregnant increases the chance that a baby will be born affected by a Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). These are the full spectrum of birth defects that are caused by prenatal alcohol exposure and they are effects that are life-long and irreversible.
As my patients will testify, I’m pretty flexible when it comes to vices. So long as you’re doing what I ask 70 to 80 per cent of the time, I’m happy to turn a blind eye to what you get up to in your ‘cheat’ time. However, there is one area where I’m absolutely not willing to negotiate, and that’s drinking alcohol while pregnant.
“But my doctor said it was fine, that the occasional glass wasn’t going to affect the baby.” Well, once upon a time, doctors thought the idea of taking a nutritional supplement to ward off a birth defect was laughable, and now every pregnant woman is clearly instructed to take folic acid (a B-vitamin) to prevent a very serious, neural tube defect called spina bifida.
So what makes alcohol so bad? Alcohol is harmful to human development. And because alcohol crosses the placenta to your baby, when you drink alcohol, so does your baby. Yes, really.
Since alcohol is broken down much more slowly in the foetus’ immature body, than in an adult’s body, the alcohol level of the baby’s blood can be higher and remain elevated longer than the level in the mother’s blood.
That’s why drinking alcohol while you’re pregnant increases the chance that a baby will be born affected by a Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). These are the full spectrum of birth defects that are caused by prenatal alcohol exposure and they are effects that are life-long and irreversible. Sometimes even fairly modest, regular drinking can have effects on the baby that may not become apparent for several years after birth.
From new research presented at this year’s meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, one such ‘defect’ is lowered fertility in male offspring. So steering clear of the booze means you’re increasing your chances of becoming a grandmother one day.
Further, children who are exposed to alcohol in the womb are less effective at suckling and more likely to show disturbed sleep patterns. Another study from the United States found that prenatal alcohol exposure makes behavioural disorders in six-year-old children much more likely than in their peers whose mothers did not drink. While the authors concluded that the larger the ‘dose’ the greater the risk, why would you take a chance?
