Caitlin Moran
Government guidelines on health rarely reflect what is actually advisable or
dangerous. The official pronouncement on exercise is that we should try to
manage half an hour a day – when, clearly, we need to do more. The “five a
day” fruit and vegetable initiative is roughly half of what we really need,
and, in an act of abject cowardice, includes that well-known fresh
vegetable, baked beans.
So when the Government announced the new “zero intake” guidelines it could
mean anything. I would guess that it means “the odd drink here and there is
all right, but the only way we can stop some pregnant mothers from having
Carling on their cornflakes is by pretending they shouldn’t drink at all, so
here’s this figure that the BMA doesn’t agree with in the slightest”.
On the other hand, given previous, random guidelines figures, it might very
well mean we should drink more. With a chaser of baked beans. Who knows?
Personally, despite drinking like a fish before I was pregnant, I found that
each of my pregnancies was marked by boking like a dog at the thought of a
bevvy, so natal alcohol abuse was never an issue. After they were born,
however, I became a borderline alcoholic. In the six months after my first
daughter arrived I drank more than I ever have in my life – a combination of
wellwishers with champagne, depression, boredom and the soporific effects
that champagney breast milk has on fractious newborns.
Still, I’m sure there will be government guidelines on postnatal alcohol
intake soon enough. And some more baked bean updates.
Carol Midgley
When I was newly pregnant the thought of not drinking for the next nine months
seemed more daunting to me than the prospect of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
Without legs.
I’d read all the scary articles and become suitably neurotic – but how could I
get through summer without extra cold lager, my drink of choice?
Then I began to get conspiratorial nudges from other women who’d had babies
before. “Oh, for God’s sake,” they’d say. “Everybody has a few. Just don’t
drink spirits.” One, 17 years older than me, confessed that in the Eighties
it had been the custom among her friends to go out together and get
“s***faced” a week before the baby was due. Well, there’d be no time once it
was born, would there?
After trying and dismissing nonalcoholic beers – a pleasure-free as well as
alcohol-free experience – I started to allow myself two halves of draught
lager (it’s weaker) once or twice a week. If I attended a wedding, I’d have
a glass of champagne. It tasted like nectar. I’m too much of a worrier to
have ever drunk more than that (the official guidance at the time) and would
guiltily compensate by eating industrial amounts of broccoli the next day.
This new zero tolerance of alcohol is too harsh for mothers-to-be who already
face a battery of dread rules about what they should avoid – even
ready-washed, bagged salad. If the health police aren’t careful, they’ll
make pregnant women too terrified to breathe. And that wouldn’t do the baby
much good either.
Alex O’Connell
How dare the Government try to take one of the few pleasures of pregnancy away
from me – coming home from work and having a glass of plonk before crashing
out in exhausted abandon. What next? A ban on Top-shop maternity wear (too
pretty for you elephants!) and pop songs with a complicated bass riff (too
noisy for baby)?
Apparently women are “confused” about what constitutes too much drink. How
filthily patronising. I gave birth to my second daughter three weeks ago.
Three months in I started to drink four small glasses of wine a week, max,
which is what the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
recommends. I was acutely aware of when I might exceed that limit. Pregnant
women know what it means to take a risk – that’s probably how they got in
that state in the first place. And we’re also good with figures; we can even
count from one to 40 weeks. Imagine!
Sarah Vine
Why does it always have to be the lowest common denominator that sets the
standard? Just because a few women drink too much during pregnancy, the rest
of us have to suffer. This is the nanny state at its worst.
As it happens, I did drink a bit while I was pregnant – the occasional
half-glass of red wine with dinner. So far, my children appear to be
perfectly normal – well, insofar as they can be, being mine. I did, on the
other hand, mainline chocolate, something that I am certain was far more
detrimental to my health than a few glasses of red wine. By the end of my
second pregnancy I was chugging down at least one large slab of Green &
Black’s per day, if not two. As a result I put on far too much weight –
weight that not only affected my mood postnatally (low self-esteem etc) but
also put massive stress on my back.
As in the rest of life, moderation is the key. It was bad enough having to put
up with busybodies (often male) frowning self-righteously as I sipped my
precious Merlot; now they’ll have carte blanche to tut-tut. And that really
isn’t helpful.
Helen Rumbelow
In some ways the government guidelines on alcohol are a welcome relief. OK, so
they actually constitute lying to us and mean that we’ll never trust their
medical advice in quite the same way again (you won the MMR debate by
sticking to the science – and now this?) But still, better a lying
government than a neurotic pregnant woman. You know, the ones folornly
picking fish flakes out of the stew (toxins), putting a downer on Christmas
Day after grandma tried to kill the foetus by serving chocolate mousse
(salmonella), and buying eBay high chairs from a “smoke-free home”
(self-righteousness).
Because with the freedom to decide what’s best for yourself also comes
worrying. More worrying than you thought possible. Because of this I think
the government guidelines should go a lot farther. It’s good that they’ve
said don’t drink in pregnancy. They should extend this to all drinks,
including water. And don’t eat anything either. Nil by mouth is the way, if
you want to be really safe.
Alexandra Blair
It is the modern dilemma of any pregnant woman: to drink or not to drink? When
one friend brightly asked whether I’d like a glass of wine at a dinner party
recently, I was the only one of three to answer gratefully, yes.
Just one, with dinner. There’s only so much Schloer and mineral water a girl
can drink. I’m not allowed, nor am eating, peanuts, soft cheese, pâté, raw
or cured meat, nor even to drink coffee, so can one glass of fermented grape
juice really hurt?
But in spite of the advice from midwives and the Royal College of
Obstetricians and Gynaecologists that one or two glasses once or twice a
week does no harm, the disapproval is tangible. Perhaps that is why my
husband has taken to being my public conscience and breaking the inevitable
silence to say: “Oh dear, that’s one less GCSE for the poor thing.”
Baby books and magazines are certainly stricter. When the panic sets in that I
have been a selfish mother, prepared to put her baby at risk of failing its
SATs or a place at Oxford, I turn to my mother for sanity.
Like many of her generation, she drank alcohol during her pregnancy because
she knew no better. She did not get drunk, nor did she drink wine, because
it made her feel sick, just gin. As she points out, it did me no harm.
Although some might disagree, and I do occasionally wonder whether it brought
about my total lack of a sense of direction, I would never have begrudged
her a glass.
During a weekend in Ireland recently, my saving was the discovery of
nonalcoholic beer. Becks was my tipple of choice, and though it raised a few
eyebrows as I weaved my way back from the bar, I felt far more part of the
crowd and it tasted just like the real thing to my insensitive tastebuds.
