No Amount Of Alcohol In Pregnancy Is Safe, Ever, Pediatricians Group Says

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Better safe than sorry sounds like perfectly common sense. But when you add up all the things you should be better safe than sorry about, you end up with the extreme anxiety our modern society fosters around having kids. It's a wonder anyone has kids at all, when you consider how incredibly fraught and micro-managed we've made the whole affair.

Absolutely!! I'm a new parent (three weeks now) and this is also my observation. A lot of the new-found 'knowledge' we have generated over the past couple of decades are mostly about minimizing negative outcomes and maximizing good outcomes on the margins. It's at the point where well-intentioned parents are taking in all this information and making checklists as if all of these micro-tips are some sort of recipe for the perfect baby. Now when something happens that's not 100% optimal, parents now have one million things they can beat themselves up about and naval gaze on despite putting in a ridiculous amount of effort to attempt to do everything to give their offspring the best upbringing.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Absolutely!! I'm a new parent (three weeks now) and this is also my observation. A lot of the new-found 'knowledge' we have generated over the past couple of decades are mostly about minimizing negative outcomes and maximizing good outcomes on the margins. It's at the point where well-intentioned parents are taking in all this information and making checklists as if all of these micro-tips are some sort of recipe for the perfect baby. Now when something happens that's not 100% optimal, parents now have one million things they can beat themselves up about and naval gaze on despite putting in a ridiculous amount of effort to attempt to do everything to give their offspring the best upbringing.

Totally agree. In some instances though a simple "Just don't drink if you know you're pregnant" is fairly simple and straight forward. It's not difficult. If it is, there's maybe some problems.

The "No screen time", "No sweetened drinks", yadda yadda of a different story when we're looking at risk vs benefit and is far more complex. As it is, parenting is really a life long struggle with guilt (too hard on them here, not hard enough there, didn't spend enough time, spent to much time, didn't let them cry it out, abandoned them to let them cry it out, etc). We needn't add more either

[chemgear]

https://calgaryherald.com/feature/pr...5-711586788fcf

The first large-scale study on FASD in Canada — a survey of more than 2,500 seven- to nine-year-olds in the Greater Toronto Area released last spring — suggests up to three per cent of the general population could have the disorder.

That’s triple previously reported rates, and means that FASD could affect more Canadians than autism and cerebral palsy combined.

In her last annual report, tellingly released just after the legalization of cannabis, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, warned that “because of its social acceptance, we have lost sight of the fact that continued high rates of problematic alcohol consumption are leading to a wide-range of harms.”

We’ve known for more than 45 years that drinking during pregnancy is harmful — more harmful to a fetus than cannabis, crack or cocaine. Why haven’t we succeeded in eradicating FASD? And what needs to change if we can’t?

And yet not all children of mothers who drink during pregnancy, an estimated 10 per cent of Canadian women, are born with FASD. While there are many risk factors for the disorder — genetics, maternal nutrition, exposure to other toxins, poverty and trauma, to name a few — their exact influence remains unclear. Nor is it known exactly how much alcohol may cause FASD, or whether the type of alcohol consumed, 13-per-cent alcohol red wine, say, versus 70-proof tequila, makes a difference.

That lack of certainty has been misinterpreted, says James Reynolds, professor of biomedical and molecular science at Queen’s University and an expert on FASD, to mean that only “problem” drinking puts a fetus at risk.

“Too many physicians in this country still advise women that it’s okay to drink a little bit during pregnancy,” he says. “But what does it mean to drink a little bit? Or is that just an enabling statement that says, ‘Oh I really don’t have to change my lifestyle because I’m pregnant.’”



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/h...l-alcohol.html

More American children than previously thought may be suffering from neurological damage because their mothers drank alcohol during pregnancy, according to a new study.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA, estimates that fetal alcohol syndrome and other alcohol-related disorders among American children are at least as common as autism.

Based on their findings, they estimated conservatively that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders affect 1.1 to 5 percent of children in the country, up to five times previous estimates. About 1.5 percent of children are currently diagnosed with autism.

Then there is the stigma that often makes mothers reluctant to acknowledge alcohol consumption.

“When you identify a kid with FASD, you’ve just identified a mom who drank during pregnancy and harmed her child,”

“People say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I went to a wine tasting and my kid came out fine,’” Dr. Taras said. “But the C.D.C. is saying, ‘We don’t know. Maybe you just won the lottery.’”

[Ducay]

I think the bulk of the evidence still supports light drinking (ie no more than 1 drink a day, irregularly) as being harmless. The real problem is that it is a very hard line to draw, so keeping the messaging at no alcohol remains the best "message" given anything above that gets grey and creates potential for issues.

I liken it to guidance around putting cardboard into your green bin. If it is clean cardboard without labels, pictures, or tape, etc, it is perfect to go in the compost. However, if you tell people cardboard can go into the compost, dumb people will start putting any and all cardboard (including plastic, tape, packaging) into the bin, which isn't allowed and all of the sudden you have issues. People inherently find a way to ruin things, and sadly here, since we're talking peoples lives; there is no safe answer but to preach zero tolerance.