"Alcohol and pregnancy" clarification needed...

Alice wrote:
I'm always reffering to post -conception , so when "the 18th" I mean
18 days after the day I had sex...

The day you had sex isn't necessarily the day you conceived.
Sperm can live for something like 4 days -- conception only
happens when you ovulate and the sperm get to the egg. In
addition, there's some variation in how long it takes the
fertilized egg/embryo to implant. If implantation happens later,
the placenta develops later, meaning more days between conception
and when the embryo/fetus is actually connected to your blood
stream.

Emily

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 10:56:39 -0800, wrote:
I think God (or nature, if you prefer) protects us from harming our babies
before we know about them. Sure, there are babies born with FAS, but
their mothers usually drink much more heavily than you or I did. I think
I read that 3 drinks a day every day raises your chance of FAS by 30%. (I
would call a person who has 3 drinks per day, every day an alcoholic,
personally. YMMV). So, even someone who was drinking enough to get me
drunk (I'm a cheap date) every day still has a 70% chance of having a
non-FAS baby. And I only drank on 6 or 8 occasions over a 30 day period -
the average is *far* less than one drink a day... Yours is, too.

delurking
Sorry if this seems a bit nit-picky, but raising your chance of FAS by 30%
does not raise your chance of FAS TO 30%. If, say, your chance of FAS was
1 in 100 (and I have no idea what the figures actually are - I'm sure
they're no way near that high) raising your chance by 30% would raise your
chance of FAS to 1.3 in 100 not 30 in 100. Does that make sense? If having
a couple of glasses of wine with dinner each night raised your chance of
FAS to 30% close to a third of Europe would be effected

I wholeheartedly support the "don't worry" idea. I had a drinking episode
early in pregnancy (I will spare you the reason why). My doctor was very
dismissive of my concerns and said, "alcoholics often have low birth
weight babies, but I don't think you have anything to worry about." While
I regret such a rotten start to a beautiful adventure, I now have a perfect
little boy.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your pregnancy, and try not to be stressed
about things you can't change (stress is a risk factor for many things in
pregnancy )

L

Emily wrote:
Alice wrote:
I'm always reffering to post -conception , so when "the 18th" I
mean
18 days after the day I had sex...

The day you had sex isn't necessarily the day you conceived.
Sperm can live for something like 4 days -- conception only
happens when you ovulate and the sperm get to the egg. In
addition, there's some variation in how long it takes the
fertilized egg/embryo to implant. If implantation happens later,
the placenta develops later, meaning more days between conception
and when the embryo/fetus is actually connected to your blood
stream.

Emily

Exactly. I know for a fact that I conceived 2 days after sex. Based on
how long it took to get a positive test result, I hazard that
implantation was on the late side. I didn't test positive until 19 days
after ovulation, so 20 days after sex. Some people (rarely) can
conceive up to 5 days after having sex, if the environment is right.

Melania
Mom to Joffre (Jan 11, 2003)
and #2 (edd May 21, 2005)

"Elle" wrote in message roups.com...
I'm not sure if there is anything anyone can say to set your mind at
ease about this issue.

First of all how sure are you that you found out 22 days after
conception? Were you charting your ovulation or going by when you had
sex? That can make a difference.

Really unless you are understating your drinking habits I just don't
think you have anything to worry about on the FAS/FAE front. Here's
why:

What really worries me is that I had three drinking episodes. I had
4
glasses of wine on the 14th day of pregnancy, 4 glasses on the 17th,
and another three glasses on the 18th, i.e. all within this
'critical
period". In all three instances Iconsumed those drinks while dinning.
No more Alcohol after I found out.

This is so early in the time frames that were mentioned in your
original points, I would say they are barely on the fringe of the
critical period.

I'm no biologist but my understanding is that alcohol does of course
cross the placenta from the mother's blood stream (as do many other
things), but not until about the end of the third week (so 21 days) at
the very earliest. This is when blood vessels form within the core of
the villi -- the embryo's heart starts to beat around the same time so
each villius has embryonic blood circulating within it and maternal
blood circulating outside it. This is the beginning of the placental
function. Until then the embryo is sustained by the yolk sac.

So I guess that all that matters is whether there is a relatively
dangerous toxic blood level at the time and/or after the placenta
begins functioning. But what about the period after implantation and
before the placenta is formed (by the way, some sources mention that
the placenta is formed by day 18)? Could one assume that the the all
or nothing principle" applies there as well, so this is the reason
that the critical period is from day 17 to 56?

regards,
Alice

Melania wrote:
Emily wrote:
Alice wrote:
I'm always reffering to post -conception , so when "the 18th" I
mean 18 days after the day I had sex...

The day you had sex isn't necessarily the day you conceived.
Sperm can live for something like 4 days -- conception only
happens when you ovulate and the sperm get to the egg. In
addition, there's some variation in how long it takes the
fertilized egg/embryo to implant. If implantation happens later,
the placenta develops later, meaning more days between conception
and when the embryo/fetus is actually connected to your blood
stream.

Exactly. I know for a fact that I conceived 2 days after sex.

It is, in fact, my understanding that if you wait *until* the day you
ovulate to have sex, you are very unlikely to get pregnant. An egg that
is already present in the fallopian tubes *before* the sperm arrives is
usually too old to be fetilized. This implies that conception almost
never occurs "on the day" you have sex.
--
Be well, Barbara

Alice wrote:

So I guess that all that matters is whether there is a relatively
dangerous toxic blood level at the time and/or after the placenta
begins functioning. But what about the period after implantation and
before the placenta is formed (by the way, some sources mention that
the placenta is formed by day 18)? Could one assume that the the all
or nothing principle" applies there as well, so this is the reason
that the critical period is from day 17 to 56?

Will it make you feel better if someone says, "Yes, Alice, you did
irrepairable harm to your baby. It will most certainly be born with
FAS,"? I mean, the only reason I can imagine that someone would
continue to worry about it after countless messages saying,
"Everything's probably fine, you're doing more harm worrying about
it..." is if the person asking the question was looking for an excuse
to have an abortion or something.

What's your agenda, really? If it is to terminate the pregnancy, last
time I checked that was still legal (at least in the U.S.), so be a
grown up and do it because that's what you think is best, not because
"I drank so I have to or the baby will be born sick." If you really
are concerned, how many different ways can we say, "Everything's
probably fine,"? What are you trying to accomplish by beating the dead
horse, so to speak?

At this point, I think you need to go speak to a doctor. Take your
calendar and your charts and your journal articles and the dates and
times that you drank, including the vintage of the wine and whether you
had it with beef, chicken, or fish, and talk to a trained and qualified
medical professional. There is nothing left for us to say - everyone
has said, "Things are probably fine," backed up by a wide variety of
evidence. If you don't believe the 15 posts in this thread, and the
111 posts in the other thread that you started, I don't know what
you're going to believe.

I will say it one more time:

While no safe level of alcohol has been determined for pregnant women,
by all counts, your level is below that which is generally regarded as
safe. Again, you would be MUCH better off if you forgave yourself and
focused on what you CAN do now to affect the outcome of your pregnancy
- take your prenatals, eat right, get moderate sensible exercise, avoid
stress, get enough rest, don't deliver on your back because Todd will
come beat you over the head with a posterboard sign that says "30%!!!!"
etc. etc. etc. It strikes me as extremely neurotic that you continue
to invest so much energy into this one, tiny, statistically
insignificant detail of what will be a very, very long pregnancy if you
don't knock it off.

And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Sincerely,
Amy

Alice wrote:
So I guess that all that matters is whether there is a relatively
dangerous toxic blood level at the time and/or after the placenta
begins functioning. But what about the period after implantation and
before the placenta is formed (by the way, some sources mention that
the placenta is formed by day 18)? Could one assume that the the all
or nothing principle" applies there as well, so this is the reason
that the critical period is from day 17 to 56?

I'd say the "critical period" is still irrelevant. Even if you had your
drinks in the period when alcohol can cross the the fetus, you did not
have THREE DRINKS PER DAY EVERY DAY during that time. THAT is what
increases your risk of FAS/FAE. The information you quoted in your
first post to this thread clearly states that *occasional* drinking
during this period does not increase risk. Three or four drinks in a
day three times is "occasional drinking".

Stop beating yourself up over this and relax.
--
Be well, Barbara

wrote in message
oups.com...

Mamma Mia wrote:
wrote in message

Amy (whose Mom rocks)

good to hear of a mum that rocks. So many people's mums around here
anti-rock! go amy's MOM!

Uh oh, now you've got me started...

My mom is the only person I know who can start with a sheep and end up
with something useful. She could shear it, clean the wool, dye it,
spin it, and knit, crochet, or weave it into a blanket, a scarf, a
sweater, or probably one of each, all in matching colors. She has
everything she needs to do this except the sheep (it's easier to buy
the wool than try to keep them in her yard in the city. She keeps mini
daschunds instead! )

We had a garden growing up, and she grew fresh fruits (apples,
raspberries, strawberries, probably others) and veggies (hordes of
tomatoes and zucchini, pumpkins, cucumber, beans, etc.) when we were
kids. She had a rose garden with over 70 different roses (all of this
in town, remember!). She managed to maintain these, raise three kids
as a single mom, and work. Woah. Every summer and fall she'd can what
was cannable, so that we had home grown food all winter.

She's the only person I know who would survive the trip west in a
Conestoga wagon, the way they did it a couple hundred years ago.

We always had homemade Halloween costumes. One year she got the three
of us and three of our friends to be a caterpillar - she made a huge
paper mache head using a 3 foot beach ball as the mold, and used fabric
sewn in a tube, held in shape with hula hoops, for the body. We
couldn't fit on most peoples' porches, but most of the neighborhood
still remembers it. Another year, I was a Hershey kiss, with a brown
body (stuffed with a sleeping bag) and foil all around me, I even had a
hat. I don't think she even used a pattern.

She is the most creative person I have ever known in my life. When she
and my step-dad were dating, it was a lot of hassle and expense to take
three kids (I think we were 13, 10, and 8) out for dinner, so we'd have
"food on the floor" nights, where we'd sit at the coffee table (it was
a sawed-off dining table, so it was huge) on the floor and eat ethnic
food. She'd decorate in the theme of the country the food was from -
so if it was Greek food it was a blue and white tablecloth and
centerpiece, and she'd wrap us in sheets (for "togas") and put wreaths
of grape vine (probably ivy) around our heads. For Mexican, she would
use this bright, multicolored fabric, put on the Spanish radio station,
and make someone wear a sombrero. We always laughed so hard and had so
much fun - it's a wonder no one choked.

I am absolutely convinced that there is nothing that my mom can't do.
She now owns a ballroom where she does weddings and events, that has a
shop connected to it where she sells everything you need for a wedding
except the dresses. They do about 100 - 150 weddings a year. She
started off as a wedding coordinator, then started the shop, then
pulled it all together with the "all in one" building. She is wildly
successful, and is absolutely the most generous and wonderful hostess
to everyone who walks through the door. I couldn't be more proud of
her.

Oh, not to mention the fact that she taught me wonderful values, loved
me unconditionally growing up and beyond, and has always been
supportive and protective of me and of my siblings, while still
allowing us to make our own mistakes and learn our own lessons. She
gave us roots and wings. She fostered loving, close relationships
between my brother and sister and I. I am so blessed. I don't know
anyone else who has a mother like mine.

Ok, I'll stop...

Amy




good for you and your sibs amy.

c

That's cool, Amy. I adore my mom, and we gave a great relationship. She's
my best friend, confidant, therapist, and best cheerleader. It's good to
hear other people have good relationships with their moms too!
--

Jamie
Earth Angels:
Taylor Marlys, 1/3/03 -- Little Miss Manners, who says, "No skank you" and
"Tank you very much, momma."
Addison Grace, 9/30/04 -- The Prodigy, who can now roll over, and pull
herself to standing while holding onto someone's fingers!

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Thank you all for your valuable comments and information, I really
feel relaxed now. I'm sorry If i "sounded" a bit "neurotic", this is
because I was really worried.

Regards,

Alice