what is your opinion on drinking alcohol whilst pregnant?

I don't think that one should drink alcohol while pregnant. It's not a long time to give up.

I recently undertook a course covering foetal alcohol syndrome, part of my ongoing development as a foster carer.

If you drink alcohol, it is in your system for around two or three hours, and is processed by the liver and expelled from the body as quickly as possible, before it can do too much harm. Unless you imbibe large quantities.

The foetus, however, lives in its own little world, with no liver to process alcohol; its sac is filled with whatever you put into it (milk, water, sausages, cabbage etc).

If you poke alcohol into your system, it lies there, pickling away for a couple of days at a time. It is now thought that as little as a couple of drinks can damage the unborn child. Sadly for the ladies, booze should be avoided at all times during pregnancy.

Unfortunately FAS has only recently been recognised, and is not covered enough by the NHS. More work and education is needed.

I am totally against smoking or worse still taking drugs whilst pregnant. Women are pregnant for such a short period of time and there is already so much that can go wrong why would any expectant mother put their unborn child at further risk by smoking or taking drugs and potentially give them an illness or disability that could affect them for life. With alcohol one drink now and again probably would not cause any problem but again why take the risk it is just not worth it.

I think that anyone who wants to give their baby the best possible start in life and really cares about the unborn life wouldn't drink alcohol while pregnant. Others may disagree but this is my personal view.

It is proven that whatever you ingest the baby ingests and you I am sure you wouldn't (if you are a reasonable parent) give a baby alcohol in their bottle so why on earth would you do basically the same thing while the baby in utero. I just think its extremely selfish for parents to drink while pregnant and that it only occurs because they can't physically see the baby so try and convince themselves that one won't harm it. As I say that same person wouldn't hold a baby in their arms and give it some alcohol in a bottle so not sure how they really justify it.

i do not agree with drinking alcohol whilst pregnant as it could cause some damage to the unborn baby

drinking during pregnancy is always a bad idea there is a condition the baby can develop called fetal alcohol syndrome which affects can effect the child all their life. they can have severe developmental delays and physical disabilities too. there will always be women who will say that they drank while pregnant and their child was fine but you have to ask yourself is it really worth the risk? although it is also worth adding the odd drink is ok but when exessive drinking occurs that is when the problem starts. if i was pregnant i would stay well away from alcohol!

I'll cut to the chase and say my opion is that it's reckless and putting the unborn child in danger.
I know that many things can harm the unborn child but it's my opinion that you should do everything possible to give a child the best possible start in life that you can. If that includes quitting smoking, quitting drinking, quitting anything then so be it.
When I was pregnant a story was doing the rounds that if you ate a potato with a green portion on it, it could harm your baby, so I stopped eating potato if I hadn't inspected and cooked it myself. Excessive? Maybe, but I wasn't planning on having lots of children and wanted to make sure that those I had were as healthy as possible.

I drank very occasionally when I was pregnant with both my children. They were both born naturally and were both healthy.