When my friend told me her pregnant sister-in-law, an out-of-town OB-GYN, drank two glasses of wine at a wedding they both attended, I was surprised. She’s an OB-GYN and she’s pregnant. What was she doing drinking?
That was a few years ago, though. Today, with many of my family and friends pregnant, I’m no longer surprised to hear about someone having the occasional drink. But my wake-up call came at a recent block party, when my nine-months-pregnant neighbor asked me to grab her a beer.
Did new research come out stating that it’s now OK to drink moderately during pregnancy? I decided to investigate.
It turns out, many moms-to-be are choosing to still drink “a little” during pregnancy.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 10 percent of women in the United States drink during pregnancy, and about 1 in 50 pregnant women binge drink.
But that doesn’t mean there’s any new research to show it’s OK.
The truth is, doctors still have no way of knowing if drinking even a little while pregnant could harm the baby.
“Who’s going to sign up for a study where some people are told to drink a little, some people are told to drink a lot, and then you follow up later to see how the fetus turns out,” said Dr. Amanda Von Hoene, an OB-GYN at St. Elizabeth’s Cold Spring office. “No one. So, it comes down to: We don’t know what the threshold is and, because of that, we never tell patients that any amount is OK.”
That unknown threshold is why the CDC, the U.S. Surgeon General, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics agree with Von Hoene’s assessment.
And the stakes are steep.
Pregnant women who drink alcohol risk giving birth to a child with a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), which could range from mild to severe and include speech and language delays, learning disabilities, abnormal facial features, low body weight and small head size.
“Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are 100 percent caused by alcohol,” Von Hoene said. “So, why risk it?”
