I drank wine during pregnancy, now what?

Q.

I am 35 weeks pregnant and have had 1 or 2 glasses of wine per night. Im a little scared now with everything I’ve read about FAS and Im wondering if there is any testing that can be done to ensure my babys well being”

Drinking alcohol can have a number of serious effects on a developing baby, including physical deformities and behavioral and learning problems. Moderate drinking, defined as 7 – 14 drinks a week, has been linked to children with life-long learning, behavioral, attention and memory problems. And there is not kind of testing that can be performed before birth to determine if your baby has fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) or was otherwise affected by any alcohol that you drank.

But in better news, newer research appears to show that there’s a huge difference between babies and kids whose moms drank 1 – 2 drinks a day versus those whose moms drank 7 – 14 drinks all at once. More than one study has confirmed that binge drinking- defined as four or more drinks within a couple of hours- is really dangerous to developing babies. But other studies have found that drinking 1-2 drinks “per occasion” (as in once or twice a week) while pregnant is not harmful (and one British study even found it to be beneficial, with kids of moms who had 1 – 2 drinks per week actually performing better on tests of cognitive ability.) So while you may want to stop drinking for the rest of your pregnancy just to be on the safe side, if you really did drink just one drink a day probably your baby will be fine.

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