I also enjoyed laughing with your mother and her friends at their recollections of neurosis-free pregnancies.

Oh, and I should also add that when I said (very much with tongue in cheek) that “they didn’t have to give birth to 9-lb. babies,” I certainly wasn’t suggesting that low birth weight is a plus, either. I was 7 lbs. 11 oz. at birth, which is plenty big. But all of my siblings’ kids and most of my friends’ have been well over 8 lbs., a few over 9, one over 10. As the owner of a vagina, I can’t help being a little nostalgic for the days when babies that big were much, much less common.

Clearly, ambiguous and contradictory advice provided by the DoH is unacceptable and I think it needs to be changed. Likewise excessive pressure on pregnant women – I believe in providing accurate, clear advice in a way that isn’t paternalistic, and allowing people to make their own choices.

But the reason I responded to your post is that you wrote about 95% of alcoholic mothers giving birth to healthy babies, and the children born to your mother’s generation being fine (if slightly underweight). Healthy at birth, certainly, but at higher risk of becoming part of the increasing proportion of the population that have chronic diseases. You didn’t mention this and as a result your post is part of the contradictory advice that irritates you so much.

Tim

stress caused by a uterine environment that is not optimal can nevertheless result in an increased risk of adult disease

Tim, that kind of statement is exactly what the article I referred to is talking about.
I don’t think anyone reading this blog is ignorant of all the things that will supposedly create an “optimal uterine environment.” My female readers are the kind of people who, if they become pregnant and choose to have the baby, will read every book and website under the sun about how to give the fetus and then the baby the best opportunity for good lifetime health. That’s A.
B) Even women who aren’t keeners like that do not generally have adversarial relationships with their fetuses and babies.
C) One of the things that causes a great deal of stress on pregnant women and mothers is the pressure to do everything perfectly for the fetus/baby/child, and the guilt about being a bad mom if they slip up. That stress has negative physiological and emotional consequences for both mother and child.
D) The advice given to pregnant women is often maddeningly contradictory, as the article I’m discussing clearly illustrates. You quote one source. There are a LOT of others to consider.
E) Women are human beings, not incubators, period. Fetuses do not develop in “uterine environments,” optimal or otherwise. They develop inside human beings. That’s the point.

Low birth weight is linked with an increased risk of adult coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and stroke, an association known as the fetal origins hypothesis first proposed by Barker about 10 years ago. Unfortunately it is also thought that even if the baby’s birth weight is not afffected, stress caused by a uterine environment that is not optimal can nevertheless result in an increased risk of adult disease.

So while I am uncomfortable with the sometimes hectoring attitude adopted by the medical profession and media towards pregnant women, it is important that sufficient information is provided to enable expectant mothers to make informed decisions about matters that will affect the lifetime health of their unborn child.

Tim

[Fetal origins of postnatal health and disease; R Harding, Early Human Development Volume 81, Issue 9, September 2005, Pages 721-722]

They might have been treated like autonomous adults while pregnant, but they certainly weren’t while birthing (pardon me, “having their babies delivered”, because we all know that the obstetrician is much more important to the process than the mother).

But I do take your point. Recent moves to criminalise drug addiction/use in pregnancy are taking some US states even further in the same direction.