Did you drink alcohol at all during your pregnancies?

[Gigi]

Because it took me years and years to conceive, and at my age, i knew i would be having my one and only, i could not bring myself to take the risk, no matter how small. So i would say "no". But then i remember, one time i was invited over to a friend's house for a formal dinner, her relatives were there from overseas, i was talking with them, everything was going so smooth, she had gone to so much effort, and we were enjoying the night, and THEN i suddenly realised I HAD JUST DRUNK HALF A GLASS OF WHITE WINE! I was in the early stages, and for that brief amount of time, FORGOT i was pregnant, and was acting like i would normally. i was mortified and stopped immediately the second it dawned on me. So "no", with one slip up.

[LimeSlice]

Yes, I drank with both of my pregnancies. Not to excess though, usually only 1 drink with dinner or something when I felt like it every few weeks.

[Maruschke]

Some interesting literature is starting to emerge. It is no longer true that we have no studies discussing the effect of minimal drinking on the fetus and on children born to women who drank during pregnancy.

Here is just one such study with some peer reviewed references.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

[Traveller]

Thanks for that, interesting literature I had read some of it before but that's a good summary.

[Rouge]

This was very interesting:

An analysis of seven major medical research studies involving over 130,000 pregnancies suggests that consuming two to 14 drinks per week does not increase the risk of giving birth to a child with either malformations or fetal alcohol syndrome.
Negative effects appear to be related to relatively higher levels of consumption per occasion, and hence, to higher blood alcohol content levels. Thus, it appears to be very important never to consume more than one drink in any one day while pregnant.

It was told to my SIL when she heavily drank in the early stages of her pregnancy (she was unaware she was pregnant). The Drug and Alcohol abuse centre almost laughed at her (not in a horrible way) when she said she had concerns. So I found that quite interesting. I think our perception may have gone from careless to over-cautious. BUT I also understand why being over-cautious is better for some people, so please don't think I am knocking anyone at all. It's just good to have some accurate information available. And please don't think that I'm saying that those that did have a drink or two weren't cautious enough.

Hope I've made sense and not offended anyone :/