No Controversy

Occasionally you see articles that call drinking during pregnancy a controversy. There is no controversy. No known amount of alcohol can be ingested during pregnancy without risk to the fetus.

You may tell yourself that one drink wouldn’t hurt anything. You may even know someone who drank during pregnancy and her baby turned out fine. But the risk is still there, and children in studies are only followed until age five. Neurological damage may not be obvious until children enter school unable to focus, comprehend abstract concepts, or control behavioral outbursts. Or until the teen years, when mental illness develops. Or young adulthood, when your baby ends up on the street.

Perhaps your doctor told you it was all right to have a glass of wine or two. But individual doctors are fallible. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the U.S. Surgeon General, and the Center for Disease Control advise pregnant women not to drink alcohol at all. No amount has been proven safe. The same amount of alcohol that might help you relax has a much more powerful effect upon your developing child. You would never give your baby a bottle of alcohol. The fetus is vastly more vulnerable.

Drinking during pregnancy is not completely a personal decision. It is also a public health issue. Sixty percent of those affected by FASD commit crimes, many of them violent. A baby with a fully functioning brain is much less likely to be a burden and a danger to you, your community, and to him/herself. I say this from the heartbreak of having raised an alcohol-affected child. Don't play roulette with your baby's brain.