Apparently drinking two cups of coffee a day whilst pregnant can double your risk of having a miscarriage. Caffeine can cross the placenta during pregnancy, and actually cause harm to the fetus. The Food Standards Agency recommend 300 mg of caffeine a day as the safe limit for pregnant women, but now they're saying you should just cut it out all together during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Pat O’Brien, a consultant obstetrician at University College Hospital in London says that “This is the best evidence we now have on the subject and I will advise patients to avoid caffeine completely, at least for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Good studies have shown it may be safer to drink caffeine after that, but no more than 200 mg a day is still to be recommended.”
Update: Remember when we wrote about this earlier this year? Can pregnant women just not win??
[via The Times Online]
This news just made the idea of being pregnant go from "awesome nine months of pure bliss" to "maybe a no-go." Seriously, zero caffeine? How is mama gonna stay awake?
I was unlucky enough to have a pregnancy scare recently, and dear me do expectant mothers have a hard time. Suddenly everything I'd eaten or drunk in the past six weeks was on trial, from soft cheese to a few extra glasses of wine. Had I been pregnant, however, I think I'd have been more likely to miscarry through guilt and stress rather than any possible harm through my diet.
It make me angry, to be honest, that theories like this are presented in this way. How much is this going to freak people out who've drunk loads of coffee all through their pregnancy (as, presumably, women have done for as long as there's been caffienated beverages and babies). It's up to the mother how she wants to interpret this type of 'finding', but I really think too many insignificant ones are given way too much space in newspapers.
There's a great article by Zoe Williams that all pregnant women should carry with them to make them feel less guilty about EVERY LITTLE THING they do. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/may/29/health.medicineandhealth
I took part in a study about the effects of caffeine when I was pregnant - I've no idea what the results showed but I do know that I had the an almost mythical "textbook" pregnancy according to all medical staff involved.
And do you know what? I ate and drank pretty much whatever I wanted. While these studies can be useful, I agree with Helene that the way they're presented does nothing except worry and place guilt on expectant mothers. Pregnant women should be given support to make informed decisions, not lectured at.
Yup, we actually wrote about the Zoe Williams piece.
http://www.dollymix.tv/2007/05/why_pregnant_women_dont_actual.html