Letters to the Editor
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moderation
You seem to equate European with British... I live in a European country and if there was one word that I could use to characterize its attitude toward food and drink (and many, many other things) it would be "moderation". The small glass of wine or beer with lunch or dinner that most people here enjoy is a far cry from the excessive binge-drinking that you are describing.
I drank a glass of wine from time to time when I was pregnant (though most of the time I just didn't feel like it). I don't give it a second thought now. Not everything good or bad that our children do (or don't do) is a reflection on their time spent in the womb or even the parenting that they have received out of the womb. It seems crazy and destructive (and dare I say quite narcissistic) to live as if it might be.
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The side of caution
I didn't drink a drop during pregnancy, but after mine were born and I was nursing, I drank my face off in a constant, stress- and sleep-deprivation-induced haze of caffeine and beer consumption.
My eldest took it all just fine (relatively speaking - he had colic, so he overreacted to pretty much everything I ate and drank except rice and water), but my middle child screamed his head off when I drank beer and then nursed him, and my youngest projectile vomited. I stopped drinking until both were old enough to wait a few hours for their next dose of milk.
There are alcoholics in my immediate ancestry, so when I saw what happened to my newborns when I had alcohol, I was awfully glad I hadn't had anything to drink while they were in utero. You really don't know their susceptibilities until later, and you can bet I'll be telling them what I noticed when they're older.
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Hard for anyone to find out what's ok
I think the big problem is that it's very difficult to obtain accurate data. That's why conservative organizations like the AMA say 'nope, none at all.' Side of caution and all that.
It wouldn't be ethical to do a controlled study on alcohol consumption in the pregnant women (obviously), and studies based on participant recall or self-reporting are notoriously unreliable, esp where activities like alcohol use or drug use are involved.
Also, organizations like the AMA are very mindful of their members being sued -- if a doctor says a couple of glasses of wine are ok and the infant has any sort of problems, well that's just another item to add to the lawsuit. If they say zero, well then the risk is 0 (seemingly). Medical malpractice systems in Europe have different rules, so while being sued is still a concern it is not the overwhelming fear it is here.
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Why does Broadsheet have to focus so much on alcohol?
You guys obsess over alcohol. But cannabis can't even be reported on, not even when it's observed killing breast cancer cells.
I'll never STOP being absolutely stunned by that fact.
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drinking
My father was in the military in the late 60's and as ever a scoundrel. He seldom missed nickel beer night in the officer's club. At that time we evidently had more than a few Germans on base. He reported that these German women seldom missed nickel beer night either. They would have their fill every week. Some seemed ready to burst with pregnancy. They wouldn't miss the next week newborn in hand. Certainly this was a family tradition. These were engineer's families.
Another note about alcohol. I have twice seen alcohol make women completely psychotic. In one case and I suspect in the other, they had elevated estrogen levels. My girlfriend had taken the morning after pill, we were drinking a few days later. Evidently her estrogen levels never returned to normal. I swear her head was spinning, she was crazy. I nearly put her in the trunk to take her to the hospital.
Alcohol and testosterone spikes similarly makes men hyper aggressive. There is not much commonly known about hormones and alcohol. Ten years of rugby, gave me more insights into excessive drinking than anyone should have.
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Over reaction
I think that this is a total over reaction, and there is a whole lot of political agendas out there which this reacts to. Medicalises the social control of women's bodies is certainly not the only one. Clearly the author has internalised some of that punishment and control of women.
For all three of my pregnancies I gave up alcohol for the first 15 weeks entirely and than had the odd drink or even occasionally two for the remainder.
We should not allow ourselves as women to be totally dictated to by the medical establishment, particualry when opinions vary so widely. It is also unreasonable that the body and activities of a woman who is pregnant should be allowed to be controlled by anyone who thinks they should have an opinion. Going down this route is a potential slide to abortion controls.
We understand our bodies best, we understand our needs best. Clearly it isn't good to indulge in lost of alcohol or drugs - it isn't good to do that at any time. So let's take a step back and think about the underlying politics of the constant debates about what women should and shouldn't do in pregnancy.
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Moderation and the limits of our knowledge
Forgive me not looking up citations for the following but it's late and the rain is making my internet service erratic...maybe someone will help me out in the morning.
Since, as previously mentioned, it would be unethical to do controlled studies of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, all of our knowledge of fetal alcohol syndrome comes from observational studies of alcoholic women--who had no intention or ability to quit while pregnant--and their children's outcomes...and the women being studied had something like at least 5 drinks per day, every day, on average. Clearly, an "occasional" glass of wine or beer can't even compare.
Secondly, the placenta does its job stunningly well. Another phenomenon of which we have very little hard knowledge is the use of chemotherapy during pregnancy. Chemotherapy drugs are designed to attack fast-multiplying cells; a developing embryo would fit that bill pretty neatly. Yet there have been at least a few women with aggressive cancers, who, given the usual options of delaying vital treatment or aborting a pregnancy, chose to risk going ahead with chemo treatment during pregnancy and have had healthy babies. Now most of these babies are still kids, so no one really has much idea what the long-term consequences to their health might be. But they were born healthy, apparently not having suffered much or any impact of extremely toxic drugs.
Of course chemotherapy and alcohol are not the same and don't work by the same mechanisms, so it's apples and oranges again. But it bears remembering that the female anatomy is pretty well designed to safeguard a developing baby. Not that this is clearance to consume anything willy-nilly--just to say that it's not unambiguous and to discuss with an OB/GYN whom you trust to be well-informed.