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hey gwen - are you in the UK or US? I have heard the pint of guniess thing too but from a woman who lives in the UK. here in the US EVERYTHING is bad... pregnant women are being told to "spit it out" if the accidentally bite into a candy with liqueur in it, and that a gla__s of wine causes fetal alcohol syndrome, oh and we also arent supposed to have deli meat, cheese, any pre=prepared foods, mayonnaise-based salads..... etc... its insane. I think there are certain precautions that need to be taken... i wouldnt eat chicken salad thats been out in the sun all day, or have raw sushi and jack daniel's 3 times a day or anything.. but people take it way too far. and what you do with oyur own body is one thing but telling other women "YOU CANT EAT HOT DOGS!!!!" is just spreading the poison. ya know? well thats my 2 cents. LOL

My birthday is in four days. I got a really nice wine from my friend. Currently, I am only 5 dpo so I don't know if I'm pregnant or not. I was considering having a gla__s of wine (just 1) for my b-day when I would be 9 dpo. Can alcohol affect the baby that early? I feel kind of guilty for considering it, but it is frustrating when you aren't sure if you are pregnant or not. Personally, I won't be drinking any alcohol if I find out I am pregnant, but, like I said, I'm just not sure if alcohol affects the baby at this stage? Thanks.

i really dont think so many women dont even know theyre pregnant until 2 months. doc's say dont worry. if theres a chance you could be pregnant, have a gla__s instead of a bottle, get my drift? :o) a gla__s of wine is good for you anyway. also when in doubt ask the doctor theyll probably tell you it's fine. :o)

kylie is right and there is no conclusive evidence...however alcohol does limit the levels of oxygen to the baby's brain...so the damage just depends on the length of exposure...Another thing to be extra careful about is "critical periods" which are stages where the most important development in a fetus occurs...so be especially careful in the first 12 weeks!

I am currently 7 months pregnant. I have had a gla__s of wine less that 6 oz here and there. I don’t drink to get a buzz or to get drunk I cook with it. I have it with a special meal that I make once in a while. 3 times since I have been pregnant. I want to explain something here that is so frustrating to me. We sit here and talk about consumption of a gla__s of wine and its effects and yet don’t consider what else we are doing to harm ourselves while we are pregnant. How many of us get our nails done at the salon? Die our hair? Use other body products that are absorbed such as perfumed lotions. Eat food with preservatives? Take cold medicine or medicine in general? Drink Coffee? Smoke or live with a smoker? These all have been proven to get into the blood stream that eventually will get to the baby. WE all sit here and say we know the effects of alcohol and the risks if we have a drink or two while we are pregnant but do ever really consider the other possibilities of harmful products? Can you honestly say that you don’t at least once while you are pregnant do something that could be harmful or risk taking? If you say no I will call you a liar. We all get into a vehicle. Car crashes are one of the top killers. How about live in a city with Smog? We all take chances. It’s making responsible choices that counts. One small gla__s of wine drank with moderation not to in-toxify isn’t any less harmful then having one cup of coffee. So before we get judgmental on what others are doing while they are pregnant I think we may want to ask ourselves what risks we are taking that will hurt our children. And like previously said Technology is something new for this genre, New testing- New Medical procedures. We didn’t know the effects when we were born and yet the majority of us turned out ok. I know that as a mother of two with one on the way I would never put my children in harms way. I consider my self a responsible parent.

vaintopaz - couldnt have said it better myself. There are so many things to think about - like cleaning products, traffic pollution etc. How many women on here work in offices. Did you know that computers, office equipment like copiers, fax machines etc give off fumes that apparently can cause harm to the baby. If we listened to every single warning then we wouldnt go out the door. There is also the drugs taken in labour. Personally I would rather have a gla__s of wine than an epidural. My doctor says that alcohol in moderation is ok. I have had the odd gla__s of wine here and there. I did with my other two pregnancies and my two boys are healthy and intelligent. Its a matter of choice. There are so many debates about what's safe and whats not. Dont eat this, dont drink that!!!! I read an article recently that said for a baby to born with FAS the mother would have had to drink a whole bottle of spirits every other day. ONE small gla__s of wine once a week is NOT going to do any harm but as I said before its up to the individual. If you are in good health and have no problems with your pregnancy then go for what feels right within yourself.

Cheers!

You can go 9 months without alcohol. Don't drink while you are pregnant. Even if your doctor says it is ok, don't do it.

Stay away from it during your 1st & 2nd trimester (though I've heard of women having half a gla__s of wine once in a while toward the end of 2nd trimester). Third trimester--one drink once or twice a week won't hurt. Do it on a full stomach and drink lots of water. My friend who is a PA is married to a doctor--she drank every so often in 3rd trimester and drank once a day while nursing and everything was fine. You have to decide for yourself. Frankly, I think some of the preservatives and other c___p found in packaged/processed foods should cause more alarm than caffiene and alcohol.

http://dovercanyon.typepad.com/women_wine_critics_board/2006/01/wine_and_pregna.html

Well I see that some still say to keep away fromit for the nine months and that it could have caused this with other children, Well since my last post I have had a healthy 9lb 11oz baby girl. She is way advanced for her age. Got her first tooth at 5 months. She is now six months of age crawling and sitting up on her own. According to my doctor she is advanced and is doing things normal to a 7th or 8th month old baby. I guess that few gla__ses of wine that I had really effected her in a bad way.(snicker) And as far as what some will say that it will effect her later on in life I also have a fifteen year old that is graduting a year early from high school. I guess I am such a bad mom for having a few gla__ses of wine over the duration of being pregnant. So many of you are against it. I am against it as well but for those who take it for granted. Drink to much and yes there will be more harm than good I do agree with you there. There is more harmful chemicals including alcohol in one dose of cough syrup than in one gla__s of wine. When we are pregnant and have a cold most doctors will tell you to its ok to have certian kinds of medicine what they dont tell you is that it can harm the baby. But it most cases the risks are low so go ahead and take it as they would think. As I said before its all about using our judgement and being responsible. Damn one gla__s of wine has more good effects on our system then bad and yet we dont realize that too many of us are not using our brains when making certian statements. How harmful.. Well Doctors will go back and forth on this and say to typically stay away but if you drink occasionally and "ONLY" have one 6 to 8oz gla__s you are not putting your baby at risk for fetal alcoholic syndrom. If you increase your consumption then of course the greater the risk. I have spoke to many different doctors since last post and most have the same general statement. We can sit here and beat this topic to death on whos right and whos wrong and yet still never agree.. My only advice is to talk to your own Doctor and use good judgement.

ya, i'm with you vaintopaz. my 4 month old has had no problems and is teething now as well. i had 3 gla__ses of wine every (to every other) sunday the duration of my pregnancy. tomato, tomahto.

My hubby is a doc and he says yes, in moderation after the third month its safe. I had a few gla__ses of wine with my daughter. She is a beautiful, bubby 9 month old and the childrens doc believes she is incredibly clever and advanced for her months as she learns everything so fast. In France, Italy women drink wine with dinner and their babies are fine. This is an article i found on the net, one of several which are all saying the same thing but nobody seems to be listening: :Since 1990 every bottle of wine, beer and spirits sold in the United States has carried the warning that "according to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects." If that has not been enough to add to the anxiety of women already concerned about their own health and the health of their fetuses, hundreds of newspaper articles and television talk shows have been devoted to convincing women that if they have even a single drink during their pregnancy that there is a chance that their baby will be born deformed, addicted to alcohol or retarded. It seems, however, as if the American government, medical authorities and media have not been telling American women the entire truth. Although the official message is "don't drink at all during pregnancy", a great deal of recent research and a re-examination of the alcohol-pregnancy issue show that there is no conclusive evidence to demonstrate that moderate drinking during pregnancy can harm the fetus. According to Doctors David Whitten and Martin Lipp of the University of California at San Francisco, "the campaign against drinking during pregnancy started in 1973 when several studies showed that heavy drinking during pregnancy can cause the condition known as the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. These studies demonstrated that the children of many alcoholic mothers were born with a cluster of severe birth defects. "What the government conveniently chose to ignore" say Whitten and Lipp, is that this syndrome is extremely rare, occurring only 3 times in 100,000 births, and then only when the mother drinks abusively throughout her pregnancy." Lipp and Whitten, whose "To Your Health" was published in 1995, are among an increasing number of doctors and researchers who feel that pregnant women have no reason to fear drinking a gla__s of wine every day. As revealed by contributing editor Thomas Matthews in the August 31, 1994 issue of the "Wine Spectator" magazine which was devoted largely to this controversy, "there is even new research that shows that moderate drinking during pregnancy may actually help the development of the child after birth." No one questions the fact that the consumption of large amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can harm the fetus. It has been well established, for example, that the children of women who drink more than 3 - 4 gla__ses of wine daily show significant decreases in birth weight and length than those of women who drink 1 - 2 gla__ses daily, and it is generally accepted that having five or more drinks per day is especially dangerous to the fetus. Here, however, agreement ends, and Genevieve Knupfer of the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley, California says that part of the problem comes about because many of the studies that reported adverse effects on the fetus used imprecise methodology. In several studies, for example, researchers arbitrarily defined "heavy drinkers" as those women who consumed more than one gla__s of wine daily. Feeling even more strongly, Dr. Michael Samuels of New York City's Doctor's Hospital says that the data has been "turned around for the purpose of frightening women", and indicates that birth defects of any kind occur in 3 - 5% of babies born in the United States and only 1 - 2% of those can be related to the ingestion of alcohol. Based on the data of Samuels and other medical researchers, it becomes clear that less than 0.1% of all birth defects are related to alcohol, and that more than 90% of the affected children are born to women with a history of alcohol abuse. More than this, not even one study carried out since the mid-1980s has shown a direct correlation between moderate alcohol consumption and birth defects. One study, of 33,300 California women showed that even though 47% drank moderately during their pregnancies that none of their babies met the criteria for Fetal Alcoholic Syndrome. The authors of this study concluded "that alcohol at moderate levels is not a significant cause of malformation in our society and that the position that moderate consumption is dangerous, is completely unjustified." Some studies go as far as to indicate that light to moderate drinking may actually improve the chance of successful pregnancies. A 1993 study published in the "American Journal of Epidemiology" by Ruth Little and Clarence Weinberg concluded, for example, that there were fewer stillbirths and fewer losses of fetus due to early labor among women who consumed a moderate level of alcohol. That some alcohol can be protective against preterm birth is also supported by Dr. Martha Direnfeld of Haifa University who points out that when used properly, alcohol is known to stop unwanted uterine contractions, and thus has "saved many pregnancies that might otherwise have spontaneously aborted." More than this, Dr. Robert Sokol of the National Inst_tute on Alcohol Abuse in Detroit has shown that it is light drinkers and not abstainers who have the best chance of having a baby of optimal birth weight and in their book "Alcohol and the Fetus" and Doctors Henry Rosset and Lynn Wiener have presented data that shows that children of moderate drinkers tend to score highest on developmental tests at the age of 18 months. Despite these and many other findings the United States government, the American Medical a__sociation, the British Medical a__sociation and the vast majority of American and English doctors continue to recommend complete abstention from wine, beer and spirits during pregnancy. An examination of why this is true reveals that the issue is as emotional, ideological and political as it is medical l

Very informative response, Heather. Frankly, I am more worried about the number of mercury-filled vaccinations the state has taken upon itself to heap upon the public. Here in New Jersey we have the highest number of state-mandated vaccinations in the country, and not surprisingly, the highest rate of autism in the country: 1 in 94.

I had a couple gla__ses here and there throughout all 3 of my pregnancies. Never in the first trimester though, I was too sick with nausea. I love wine and so it was hard at times to stay away from it, but in the third trimester when the baby is fully developed and you're stressed out from being all big and sore having a gla__s of wine can be relaxing.

Why does anyone need the government to tell them what to do or think, when there are no reasonable studies to even uphold the warnings except the ones they did in the 1980s showing that some women who drank 5 drinks per day throughout their pregnancy had babies with fetal alcohol syndrome. Everyone would be wise to follow common sense and use alcohol in moderation. I agree with some of you who have pointed out products such as sugar, trans fats and "diet" anything are more harmful to a baby than an occa__sional gla__s of wine. It's too bad so many people live in constant fear. My doctor told me in 18 years of practice she has yet to meet a child with any alcohol related problems . I, nor anyone I know has known of that either. Ladies, let's just all relax a bit here and enjoy our pregnancies, even with a gla__s of wine if you'd like! Everything will be OK.