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.

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