"UK health experts now say it is safe for women to drink during the early months of pregnancy – advice which flies in the face of government guidelines.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), an independent organisation, has said it is safe for women to have 'less than one drink' – or 1.5 units - of alcohol a day after the first trimester of pregnancy.
A 125ml of wine at 12.5% alcohol by volume is over just over 1.5 units. Binge drinking is defined as 'more than five standard drinks', and may be particularly harmful during pregnancy.
http://www.decanter.com/news/150192.html
at last some sense on this subject. has anyone out there ever met someone with foetal alcohol syndrome and if they have was that caused by their mother having a glass or two of wine with dinner every evening or was it because their mother drank 1-2 bottles of gin every day.
During my wife's pregnancy and subsequent visits to the rotunda I spoke about this with every consultant we met and the general consensus was that the hysterical attitude on this issue is not generally coming from European studies (with a few exceptions in the UK) but from US ones. The Purtian ethic is alive and well in the US heartland and filters into this debate just as it does into everything from nudity to swearing (cf. janet jackson).
I strongly doubt there is a mother or pregnant woman in Ireland that did not have a few drinks sometime early in their pregnancy (before she knew she was pregnant). And again I ask where are all the foetal alcohol affected babies?
we are even starting this bullying in Ireland with new labels on wine bottles coming any day now....http://www.independent.ie/national-news/alcohol-labels-to-have-baby-warning-1197809.html
Given that water was often unsafe to drink for most of the last 1000 years we resorted to drinks containing alcohol - beer, wine, cider etc. (the chinese boiled their water to purify it and put leaves in to add flavour - hence tea), surely a substantial portion of the population of Europe (and those in america of european ancestry) would have had a long history of foetal alcohol syndrome in their families or at very least a long history of babies affected by smaller birth weight and all the rest.
All this is just more bullying of women in my view and causes endless worry about what they did before they knew they were pregnant. I guarantee that worry and stress like this causes more problems than a glass or two of wine.
Of course excessive drinking doesnt do anyone any good (adult, child or foetus), but lets get some perspective on this.
To show I am not alone in this view let me quote Jancis Robinson, (a mother and gifted wine writer)...
“in this, our male dominated society, men feel entitled to lecture pregnant women on how they should best discharge their responsibilities to their unborn children.”
Jancis has written extensively and lucidly on the subject but I found that quote via google on this article - http://www.beekmanwine.com/prevtopak.htm which supports my view.
More of the same in her book - The Demon Drink or her more recent biog Confessions of a Wine Lover or check out her site http://www.jancisrobinson.com/
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