https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/alcohol-and-pregnancy/

I found this article helpful.

I sat a bar drinking pitchers of beer with my husband while playing erotic photo hunt. Peed on a stick that night. Pregnant.

DD is a bright, healthy 5 year old.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It takes a LOT of alcohol to give rise to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. as in, chronic alcoholic falling down drunk every day. the "zomg don't have one drop or you will kill your baybeeee!" thing is a public health message not based on any actual science.

It doesn't not take falling drunk every day for FASD to occur. There's no solid threshold which is why it's better to abstain once you are aware of a pregnancy.

No, there is no solid threshold. But I've read just about every case study out there on FAS - the mothers were heavy, heavy drinkers.

You're fine - seriously. If FAS were so easy to cause, our grandparents' generation would have been an FAS epidemic. My grandmother was advised to continue to drink in moderation during her pregnancy, so imagine many of her peers were as well. Despite the scare tactics, FAS is a disease of true alcoholism, also closely associated with cocaine use, cigarette smoking, poverty, and domestic instability and violence. The evidence for later onset symptoms (ADHD, learning difficulties, etc.) traced back to prenatal alcohol exposure is scanty and causation has not been proven.

The ultimate story. My sister has drunk heavily throughout her adult life (now 57). She was married to a man who drank heavily. After she left her husband, she started dating a long time family friend who is a nice guy but also drinks heavily. She has drunk heavily for most of her adult life. A months ago she went to the hospital for liver failure. She almost died but is recovering. The point is that she has a serious alcohol abuse problem.

When she was married, she didn't find out she was pregnant until she was almost 6 months. She just thought she had some soft of virus, took OTC meds until her problems wouldn't go away and she went to her PCP. The doc asked her how far along she was and she asked "for what?"

My niece is now 22 and just graduated magna cum laude in the top 5 of her class. She's a brilliant young woman who already had a corporate job lined up in January ready to start as soon as she graduated (two weeks ago).

Many woman have been in your situation and the children are fine.

Anonymous wrote:I was in Las Vegas for 5 days, and I drank like I was in Vegas. Came back and found out I was pregnant 2 days later.

My DD is now 1 y/o and in perfect health.

Found out the day we got back from our (then) yearly wine tasting vacation to Napa/Sonoma. My almost 7 year old is a healthy kid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It takes a LOT of alcohol to give rise to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. as in, chronic alcoholic falling down drunk every day. the "zomg don't have one drop or you will kill your baybeeee!" thing is a public health message not based on any actual science.

It doesn't not take falling drunk every day for FASD to occur. There's no solid threshold which is why it's better to abstain once you are aware of a pregnancy.

FAS takes a LOT more than a few drinks or even a binge. the "no safe level of alcohol" thing is public health propaganda. On a population level it may avert some cases of FASD but on an individual level it's meaningless. literally no baby ever got FAS because the mother had a boozy brunch at 4 weeks pregnant.

+1

It's not possible to determine a safe threshold, but also people are going to interpret "moderate drinking" differently. For someone who routinely drinks 5+ drinks a day, 2 drinks a day would seem moderate. For someone who doesn't drink that much, 2 drinks a day sounds like a lot of drinking.

Accordingly, the guidelines are to abstain.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It takes a LOT of alcohol to give rise to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. as in, chronic alcoholic falling down drunk every day. the "zomg don't have one drop or you will kill your baybeeee!" thing is a public health message not based on any actual science.

It doesn't not take falling drunk every day for FASD to occur. There's no solid threshold which is why it's better to abstain once you are aware of a pregnancy.

FAS takes a LOT more than a few drinks or even a binge. the "no safe level of alcohol" thing is public health propaganda. On a population level it may avert some cases of FASD but on an individual level it's meaningless. literally no baby ever got FAS because the mother had a boozy brunch at 4 weeks pregnant.

Anonymous wrote:It takes a LOT of alcohol to give rise to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. as in, chronic alcoholic falling down drunk every day. the "zomg don't have one drop or you will kill your baybeeee!" thing is a public health message not based on any actual science.

It doesn't not take falling drunk every day for FASD to occur. There's no solid threshold which is why it's better to abstain once you are aware of a pregnancy.

It takes a LOT of alcohol to give rise to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. as in, chronic alcoholic falling down drunk every day. the "zomg don't have one drop or you will kill your baybeeee!" thing is a public health message not based on any actual science.

It's fine, and it doesn't make you irresponsible. I boozed it up a couple weeks before I found out I was pg because I had gotten my period. No idea how you can have a period while pg (and I had some unexplained bleeding later in the pg too). The human body is weird.

I was drunk from boozy brunch when I peed on the stick. I had an "ooops" pregnancy and I freaked out about this too because I had been drinking before I knew. At my first appointment my OB said the same as a pp in this thread, that almost everyone drinks before they know and if it was going to affect the baby at that point I would have miscarried. I'm sitting here looking at my one month old who is the picture of health and 96% percentile for growth. It's natural to freak out about this but trust me you and your baby will be fine.