Pregnant Women

[Arlingzen Bill]

Right Bill. In case this is unclear, I am not pregnant. If I said "this is my biggest fear about skydiving" you wouldn't say "hey, when did you do that???"

Actually with sky diving I might... cause I can actually see you going skydiving on a dare.

[Chaldanya]

You realise you just used an anecdote and then said "anecdote =/= data" right?

Yup because i am not stupid. it was an anecdote to counter Rune's up above. I thought that was fairly clear.

N

[mouse]

I had a glass of wine at a bar when I was massively pregnant, right after we concluded a week-long trial, and, let me tell you, if the waiter had tried to tell me he would "not help me injure my unborn baby," well, heads would have rolled. It was just the opposite, though: After I made very clear that I only wanted a couple ounces and not a full glass, and after I sipped that over the course of my colleagues having 3 drinks, the waiter kept asking me if I wanted another.

[Chaldanya]

A small amount of alcohol while pregnant is statistically safe. Which isn't the same as safe really.

And? There are fairly few things in this life that are 100% safe.

N

[Shryke]

And? There are fairly few things in this life that are 100% safe.

N

I'm not sure what you want. Alcohol is not good for a developing fetus. If you drink small amounts, it's very likely not going to have any effect, but it's still true.

[awesome possum]

And? There are fairly few things in this life that are 100% safe.

N

Yep. Sitting at my desk right now is statistically safe, but there are still countless ways I could end up injured or killed just from sitting here.

There is technically a chance that a plane can malfunction and fall on top of me while I sit here, or get shocked by a freak electrical surge, or someone can release a herd of wild dingos, or ebola, or I just keel over and die from an aneurysm. Should I live the rest of my life in fear that one of these things will happen? Or should I acknowledge that the chances of it happening are so slim as to be nonexistent, and carry on with my life?

[Angalin]

How much can the baby feel when you're porking its pregnant mother?

In theory, the fetus doesn't feel anything during sex; the cervix acts as a barrier. The woman might not always find sex comfortable (or medically advised, depending on how risky the pregnancy is), but that's a very individual thing.

I was on sick leave then bed rest for quite a lot of my pregnancy. When I did leave the house, mostly people just looked at me in fear that I'd go into labour in front of them (it was twins) and they'd have to do something about it. :P

Actually with sky diving I might... cause I can actually see you going skydiving on a dare.

Would she post while skydiving, though?

[Isalie]

So, hehe, well, I feel I will turn sarcastic pretty quick if I keep replying, to each their own.

[Shryke]

Except the probability of you being eaten by dingos is based on your environment and the presence of dingos anywhere near you, whereas alcohol and it's effect on a fetus is subject to a bunch of genetic factors and is based on statistics saying it doesn't have any proven correlation even though alcohol is bad for a fetus.

The "one glass a day won't kill the baby" isn't based on it having no effect, but on inconclusive statistical correlation between consuming that much alcohol and defects in the children. And those results are based on group averages which ignore a rather large variation in how people handle alcohol.

[AutumnEvenings]

I have very mixed feelings about this, having birthed my twins early and seeing them and so many other babies in the NICU. On the one hand, I do think people should be able to evaluate what risks they are willing to take...and most pregnant women will take their baby's health into consideration. There are so many things that could potentially harm an embryo/fetus, it's impossible to avoid them all. I would have been furious if someone told me I couldn't use a laptop because of radiation fears, you know?

On the other hand, there is a NICU mommy I'd like to smack into next week. She had her second IUGR baby, and while I don't know for a fact that she smoked during pregnancy, she was smoking within hours of her c-section, and then coming into the NICU. You know, where babies struggle to breathe. The nurses called her on it, and she claimed it was incense. Bullshit. They make her change clothes every time she comes, but god damn do I hate her. One of my happier NICU moments was when my boys got moved into a different room than hers. So yeah, I would do anything to stop her from smoking, having another NICU baby, and exposing all the babies to her filthy smoke.

(I don't even hate smokers, but come on. My Atticus had surfactant treatments and was intubated--the last thing he needed was someone being cavalier about his air quality, you know?)

[Guest Raidne]

This thread has so far focused on the random stranger assuming someone is pregnant and denying them alcohol/cigarettes/caffeine/whatever, but what if you know someone is pregnant?

Actually, in the initial example with my regular cafe customer, I knew she was pregnant. I've never faced this situation with a person who I did not know to be pregnant. I NEVER assume that a woman is pregnant. Whenever people speculate on this at work I ask "Is she in labor? No? Then who knows unless she says so."

Regarding the glass of wine, Shryke is right. There is still a risk, it's just not statistically significant at some level. That level is NOT one glass a day. I would personally have 4oz once a month or more without worrying, but it would be wrong to say that there is no risk.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

On alcohol, my understanding is that the effects of the alcohol very much depend on when during your pregancy you have it. In fact, I believe that it is MOST dangerous during the FIRST trimester, you know, the time when you don't look like you are pregnant (usually). My doctor said it was fine to have a glass of wine now and then in the third trimester (though I wasn't actually in the third tri all that long, and, to be clear, the fact that my twins were born early had nothing to do with the fact that I had a bit of alcohol and everything to do with the fact that I measured 37 weeks at 30 weeks). I was also cleared for a bit of champagne at New Years and at a wedding.

There was an article somewhere a couple of years back (when I was pregnant) that described the cultural phenomenon of women becoming community property when they are pregnant. That is, it somehow becomes culturally ok to tell a pregnant woman something you would NEVER tell her otherwise. It's wrong, but it's there.

Oh, and most people don't make the mistake of giving me unsolicited advice about my body (or my children, for that matter) twice. . . .

[Rune Targaryen]

I'm note saying that everyone that drinks or smokes on her pregnancy will injure the baby, but there is a chance, and I think that drink and/or smoke is not worth the risk. I'm not a women so I will never know what is like to be pregnant, and all the stress that come together with this, but the baby have no fault that pregnancy is a stressful situation and when you drink and/or smoke there is a chance that the baby will be affected negatively, and he or she don't have a choice.

I don't think you need a study that confirms with 100% sure that something is harmful if is something that you can avoid .

And the point with the story I told was not to say "If you smoke you baby will pay for it", is just that I think that if you don't smoke and/or drink your baby will be stronger to face a difficult situation, like labor problems or being born early.

[salt]

Obviously it hasn't been proven that one glass of wine is ok for your baby, its just that it hasn't been proven to be harmful. Alcohol is a poision, and the way poison works is that when you get a bunch of it in your body, you die. A little bit won't kill you, but as a general rule, if 20 parts of something is deadly, 1 part of it is still probably not a great idea.

If I were a pregnant woman, I'd probably err on the side of not putting poision into the system of my devloping child. Its really not that hard to go 9 months without alchohol. Like, at all.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

This thread has so far focused on the random stranger assuming someone is pregnant and denying them alcohol/cigarettes/caffeine/whatever, but what if you know someone is pregnant?

Knowing someone is pregnant, I would definitely not procure alcohol or cigarettes for them. My personal anecdote relates to two family members, both of whom smoked and popped painkillers during pregnancy, both of whom regaled us with stories of how "such and such" and "so and so" smoked while they were pregnant, and their babies turned out fine. Of course, one baby has seizures and has stopped breathing on more than one occasion and the other was born premature and died, so morally, I would refuse to procure alcohol or cigarettes to a woman I knew was pregnant.

That's ok, she can buy them without you. I'm not saying that it's right, but by that logic, my cousin, who is, in fact, morbidly obese and diabetic should have been banned from having children until she lost weight, or at least, you know, denied food. (She had two premies, who are lovely girls, though one of them does have a [genetic] hearing problem, which I suppose you can try to blame on her weight).

[Shryke]

There was an article somewhere a couple of years back (when I was pregnant) that described the cultural phenomenon of women becoming community property when they are pregnant. That is, it somehow becomes culturally ok to tell a pregnant woman something you would NEVER tell her otherwise. It's wrong, but it's there.

Oh, and most people don't make the mistake of giving me unsolicited advice about my body (or my children, for that matter) twice. . . .

I think it's generally a symptom of people feeling protective over children. Even the unborn. Basically, it's cool if you smoke yourself to death but people get pissy when you take a child along for the ride.

"Community Property" is a great way to put it. God knows some of the things people chose to make a fuss about are dumb as shit though.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Obviously it hasn't been proven that one glass of wine is ok for your baby, its just that it hasn't been proven to be harmful. Alcohol is a poision, and the way poison works is that when you get a bunch of it in your body, you die. A little bit won't kill you, but as a general rule, if 20 parts of something is deadly, 1 part of it is still probably not a great idea.

If I were a pregnant woman, I'd probably err on the side of not putting poision into the system of my devloping child. Its really not that hard to go 9 months without alchohol. Like, at all.

Yup, and most large fish these days have mercury (they me a list at my first appointment), nitrates are bad for you, so nix the bacon and hotdogs, you might get listeria so make sure you only eat pasteurized milk and cheese (nevermind that the most recent listeria outbreaks have come from non-dairy sources or, you know, PASTEURIZED dairy), forget about cold medicine (which is misery, because pregancy makes you more snotty than normal), you have to sleep on your left side, sushi might as well be arsenic, and, hmmmm, what am I forgetting, I'm sure some of the currently or more recently pregnant ladies can remind me. Let's not even go into the feeding wars that exist after you deliver.

[Seventh Pup]

To me this OP kind of perfectly shows the opinion of must American's towards pregnant woman. Which is that subjectively they all for woman's freedom to make their own choices, even one that are bad for the baby. But if given a bit of power over the woman will try to use that power "help" her.

My husband and I are seriously thinking about kids in the next year, and threads like this scare me. I mean I don't want my Barrista to think they know better then me what I should do with my body. It really scares me that it's just kind of okay to for pretty much everyone to do try to take control of your life. When my best friend was pregnant she had someone take her whole grain bread of of her cart and offer up folic acid rich white bread instead, because it was better for the baby. My sister got chewed out for going to Subway by a well meaning aunt.

Seriously I can understand why adoption can seem tempting. Pregnancy is scary enough from the physical side of it. But the cultural side of it is scary too.

[Whitestripe]

nevvermind

[Arbor Gold]

Would she post while skydiving, though?

Raids? Probably. I can see the thread now, about how the pilot and jump instructor are doing everything wrong.

:P