Risk Increases with Alcohol Used In Early Pregnancy

Drinking While Pregnant Affects Child's Development.

- Shree Vardhan Mani

There's a very good reason moms-to-be are advised to be teetotalers: Drinking alcohol puts a woman's pregnancy and her unborn child at risk for a number of potentially devastating outcomes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drinking alcohol while pregnant can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, and fetal alcohol syndrome disorders (FASDs), a range of physical, intellectual, and behavioral disabilities that affect a baby throughout his or her life.

You may have read that a glass of wine once in a while isn't dangerous for a pregnancy, or that once a woman is in the third trimester of pregnancy any alcohol she drinks isn't likely to affect her baby because by that point the baby is fully developed. But research has shown that there's no time during pregnancy when it's safe for a woman to drink, nor is there an amount of alcohol that's safe.

Each week a woman consumes alcohol during the first five to 10 weeks of pregnancy is associated with an incremental 8% increase in risk of miscarriage, according to a study by Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) researchers.

Impact of alcohol use rises through the ninth week of pregnancy, and risk accrues regardless of whether a woman reported having fewer than one drink or more than four drinks each week. Risk is also independent of the type of alcohol consumed and whether the woman had episodes of binge drinking.

Though most women change their alcohol use after a positive pregnancy test, consuming alcohol before recognizing a pregnancy is common among both those with a planned or unintended pregnancy. Half of the 5,353 women included in the analysis reported alcohol use around conception and during the first weeks of pregnancy.