Boozing with a bump

There has been a lot of talk in the news the last few days about women who drink when pregnant.
The debate has been sparked after a court case whereby a baby was born disabled, following her mother excessively drinking whilst she was carrying the child. Whilst pregnant at 17 the female drank vodka and beer to extremes and now the judges are being asked to offer the child compensation and overall for women who drink when pregnant to be made illegal.

So what do you think?

I’ve not had a child or been pregnant in my life so far and it has to be said I do enjoy having a good drink – whether a nice wine with dinner or a more heavy night out with friends drinking and dancing.

However, I really do think I would be Little Miss Paranoid if I were ever pregnant and would watch what I ate and moreso drank like a hawk. I would hate to think anything I’d have done would in any way harm that baby.

Never having been pregnant I don’t feel I can really judge, but on my views as they are, I can’t imagine you’d want to drink when expecting or do anything that could be bad for that unborn child. Let alone need a legal system to be put in place to stop you.

Whether women should be arrested that do drink when pregnant is another case in point. After all there are no set rules to parenting, people choose to bring up their children as they feel best – to some this could be seen as wrong, but to others the right way.

I know some Mums-to-be who have had the odd glass of wine or even Guinness (the iron is said to be good apparently). However, I don’t know of any who went out binge drinking!

The same goes for smoking, again why would you risk harming your unborn child?

Looking online at some of the articles talking about how the alcohol can impact a baby’s growth and wellbeing I can’t imagine anyone even considering binge drinking, but then again people smoke despite horrendous images on the packs and similar. People know the risks but choose to ignore it. That said, harming yourself is one thing, an innocent life is entirely different in my view.

I do feel making this a legal issue and arresting those drinking when pregnant seems a tad extreme and it also saddens me that there are people in this country who have behaved in such a way to even cause this debate to come to light.

We don’t want to make it so that everybody’s every move is under constant scrutiny, but I do agree that if a case is found where a child has been born with a condition and it can be proved to be the result of the mother drinking excessively or smoking then some form of action should be taken.

I don’t think it works going up to anyone you see with a bump drinking something alcoholic and arresting them there and then with no context though.

Really it seems to come down to a lifestyle choice – guidance to us for all issues changes constantly – you shouldn’t drink this, you should eat this, you should have more of this but less of that and so forth. Would some argue exercising too vigorously during pregnancy is also a form of neglect and as I’ve heard others ask – where does that leave abortion too? How far do you go?

I’d be interested to see what any expectant Mums think or those who have had children already.

And what about those that drink before realising they are pregnant, when you are not knowingly doing harm to your baby? I know a few people that has happened to, my Mum included and I turned out okay (well I think I did…)