Alcohol and the Fetus/Embryo/Baby/Parasite Debate

For 16 weeks now I've been reading all the articles, books, and Web sites people give me that relate to healthy pregnancy practices. Every single aspect of my life has been addressed: what's best to eat, how often (and how) to exercise, what position to sleep in, what my caffeine intake should be limited to, how to pick things up off the floor when I get huge, how late I can fly, how much weight I should gain, and, of course, the effects of both alcohol and stress on the little parasite that's taking up all my bladder space.

I list these last two together because I cannot separate them, if other people can. I don't need to reiterate the snippy debate between European and US standards for alcohol consumption, during pregnancy or at any other time. I grew up in America, with a certain expectation of what was 'okay' to drink; my parents were very sensible people in that respect -- and they were poor, so buying wine or good beer simply wasn't part of our lives. However, I moved to Europe and married a European in my early 20s, so quickly acquired the pleasing habit of having wine with dinner every night. I refuse to justify this habit to anyone who thinks it's awful. Go read French Women Don't Get Fat for yourself. I can't take seriously the criticism of any society whose idea of a great weekend is to mow a chemically green lawn.

Added to this is my own scientific training and analytical turn of mind. I don't simply nod my head and do whatever my doctor tells me. No, I do the research for myself. And the research, I have to say, has done nothing but get me completely wound up and stressed out about the entire issue.

When I first took the "you've got a blue line" test, I did a bunch of research online and decided to go with the UK government guidelines rather than France, tempting as it was (in the last month, by the way, France has altered its recommendations; it used to advise women to have a glass of wine per day, but now is more aligned with the UK). The advice is "no more than 1-2 units of alcohol once or twice a week." That's all right until you find that 125 ml of 12% wine constitutes 1.5 units of alcohol. It's not a lot. And it's not even that I wanted more -- my mother was absolutely right when she said I wouldn't even feel like having alcohol most days (she didn't abstain, either). But I hated the feeling of being constrained.

Then well-meaning people began sending me research, which, instead of reiterating or listing the Web sites here, I'll condense (imagine people screaming this progressively louder across a room): WE DON'T KNOW! WE DON'T KNOW SO WE'LL TELL YOU NOT TO HAVE ANY AND SCARE YOU TO DEATH TO MAKE SURE YOU DON'T!

Well, bugger that. How is it that chemical companies and mining conglomerates and people like Monsanto have permission to litter our water, air, and bodies with toxic, probably cancer-causing pollutants simply by saying nobody can disallow their actions because WE DON'T KNOW what the impact is, yet I'm ostracized for my two drinks a week because alcohol, which has been around about as long as civilization, might possibly have a miniscule effect on a baby that will probably be just fine?

And here we hit the stress wall, which frankly applies to all the other damned pregnancy advice. With all the articles people send me of the possible effects of alcohol, I do worry. And that stress, it has been shown, probably has a much more detrimental impact on my child than have a glass of wine every day could ever have if I'd hadn't known better (so to speak).

Forget the alcohol for a second. Imagine you're a thirtyish woman who eats well, exercises relatively regularly, isn't all that fit but is pretty darn healthy, keeps her mind active, gets outdoors a lot, but, of course, spends a lot of her time trying to limit her calorie intake and get really in shape cause it'd be nice to be super-fit, and should probably cut back on drinking due to the calories, and who also wants to learn French and Arabic and hike through Tibet and further her mathematical studies and learn to play the piano really well. Then she gets pregnant. Suddenly, all this stuff she's been trying to do in a mild sort of way becomes, in the doctors' eyes, absolutely essential. The message is, in short, "You must immediately become the perfect person you've had an image of for the last 10 years." Stressful? You betcha.

The other day I was at a seriously boring dinner party, where I made a sarcastic comment about not being able to drink. A man said, meaning well, "Well, just think of it this way. At least you're not forcing your baby to consume alcohol." At which point I was ready to scream at him. It's the baby that's keeping me from doing a whole hell of a lot of things I love doing, from wine with dinner to doing handstands in yoga to sleeping through the night without needing to pee.

Right now I'm clinging to a lifeline in the form of What's Going on in There?, a book about baby brain development written by a neurobiologist. Here's the research: moderate drinking probably does have a mild effect on the fetus's brain. Modest drinking, however, having been subjected to thousands of studies both sides of the pond, is still inconclusive, although tends to lean toward the preassumptions of the culture (yes in the US, no in Europe).

The catch? "Moderate drinking" is defined as three drinks per day, every day. "Modest drinking," one drink every day. The effect of high stress? Very conclusive detrimental effects on emotional and mental development. With my desire for only two unmeasured drinks a week, I know which risk I'd like to take.