Drinking Alcohol While Pregnant: Not Even A Drop’s Safe, Warns The British Medical Association

Guidelines surrounding whether women should or shouldn’t drink alcohol during pregnancy have always been hazy, to say the least.

Some experts have OK’d drinking the ‘odd glass’ of alcohol during the second and third trimester of pregnancy and others have even said it could potentially benefit the baby. We can’t help but feel like that’s just what we all wish was the case…

So which advice should mums-to-be follow? A good start would be clarifying the exact amount that’s safe for both mum and child. And doctors seem to agree.

The British Medical Association (BMA) is warning pregnant women not to drink alcohol at all. Not a glass, not a sip, nada.

They’ve criticised the ‘confusing’ guidelines for drinking alcohol when pregnant and are instead advising expectant mothers to stay off the sauce completely.

The BMA’s also calling for “more explicit” warnings of the risks to babies on bottles and cans. “On some bottles there is a very small icon with a lady with a bump,” he told The Sunday Times. “I think it should be rather more explicit than that.”

Risks of drinking while pregnant include miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth and small birth weight – and it’s still not known exactly how much alcohol is safe to consume and how much can cause scary outcomes like these.

When you drink, the alcohol passes from your blood through the placenta to your baby – who struggles to process it. Sadly, doctors estimate that around 7,000 babies a year in Britain are born with complications because their mum drank alcohol while pregnant.

The BMA isn’t the only expert group to suggest that pregnant women don’t drink alcohol at all – the NHS also advises mums to be cautious, stating on its website that “the safest approach is not to drink at all when you’re expecting.”

Meanwhile the Department of Health recommends that women who do opt for a drink stick to just one or two units a week, to minimise the risk to the baby. And the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence advises that women abstain from alcohol entirely during the first three months of pregnancy and then has the same recommendation as the Department of Health.

You can read more about alcohol in pregnancy here.

Anyone else think there’s too much conflicting advice out there? Tweet us @YLifestyleUK.

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