Don’t kid yourself, drinking while pregnant isn’t harmless warns Kerry Parnell

“MY mum drank when she was having me and I turned out fine.” How many times have you heard that statement from a pregnant woman as she confidently quaffs a glass of wine?

Why drinking while pregnant isn’t harmless

“MY mum drank when she was having me and I turned out fine.”

How many times have you heard that statement from a pregnant woman as she confidently quaffs a glass of wine?

Even if you’re tempted to inform her she might be mistaken, as she is a bit crackers, it is perhaps a little rude to do so. But she is wrong.

Drinking a lot while pregnant will affect your unborn child. That much is known. Don’t drink and you remove the risk. Simple.

But there are two problems: 1) Medical experts can’t tell you what “a lot” actually is and 2) how many people, pregnant or not, would ever volunteer that they drink too much?

Pregnancy and drinking is a contentious topic. If pregnant women do drink, they usually think no one has the right to tell them otherwise.

You get the determined, forthright types who like to make the above declaration while scoffing at the preposterous notion that they could be wrong. They’re usually well-educated women who’ve never had anything bad happen to them, or anyone they know.

For them, babies with problems are born to “other people”. They’re fit and clever and shop in About Life — how could anything go wrong?

And yet, unless they happen to be a neonatalist with a portable ultrasound in their pocket, I’d like to suggest that they don’t actually know if that glass or three of pinot gris is affecting their baby.

Then you get the mums who carry on having a drink because they always have, and somehow just don’t have the willpower, or education, to stop. Having another life in their body isn’t enough of an incentive to quit the habit, and anyway, what harm can it do?

They both have one thing in common — they think a “little drink” is OK. But how do you define “a little drink”?

Moderation to a woman who drinks twice the recommended units per week in her normal life, would still be highly dangerous to her unborn child.

That’s why the current Australian guidelines are to drink nothing.

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And while Ms Clever Clogs might think that is extreme and doesn’t apply to her, citing that her expensive private obstetrician said it’s OK to have the odd glass of red, nobody knows exactly what damage is being done.

Experts are in agreement that alcohol in excess can result in foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, a condition that causes a range of problems, from low birth weight to distinct facial features, heart conditions, behavioural problems and intellectual disabilities.

FASD is not well understood, so is often confused with autism and other conditions. In many cases the baby appears fine at birth and it’s not until the child is in its teens, suffering learning disabilities, that FASD is diagnosed.

Pregnancy and drinking is a contentious topic. If pregnant women do drink, they usually think no one has the right to tell them otherwise.

The facts are plain: Alcohol crosses the placenta and affects the foetus exactly as it affects you. Would you fill your newborn’s bottle with wine? No, didn’t think so. But that’s what you are doing when you drink while pregnant — with the potential to cause brain damage.

Experts can’t confirm the exact amount of alcohol that causes FASD, which is in itself part of the problem.

What is OK for one woman, isn’t necessarily for another. And while they agree that a glass of wine every now and then is OK, they advise even just two or three a week is probably not.

There are an estimated 3000 children a year born in Australia with FASD. In the US, it’s thought five per cent of children have it, while the UK estimates one in 100 children are born brain damaged by alcohol use.

The Baird government last week pledged funding for an FASD clinic in NSW. A pilot scheme has been running at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead — and doctors say it’s so successful there’s already a long waiting list of mothers and children trying to get in.

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So saying “it’s fine” because you like to think so is not true. Most of us know you don’t smoke while pregnant, so why do we think we know better than doctors on drinking?

I know many women who have drunk a lot while pregnant. Once on a night out, a pregnant friend of a friend drank heavily and used cocaine. I remember being shocked — and the only one to suggest she didn’t.

Recently there was the time a waiter refused to serve a heavily-pregnant diner a third drink, so she angrily made someone else fake order it for her. No one said anything.

We search and search for a reason our children get autism, blaming everything from non-stick pans to vaccinations to pesticides.

But we know why they get FASD. We just don’t want to hear it.