Light drinking during pregnancy: Is it OK?

by Amy Graff © 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.
My mother enjoyed a glass of wine every evening when she was pregnant with me in the early 1970s. "That's what my doctor told me to do," she says. "He said that it would relax me."
Twenty-eight years later, my obgyn gave me very different advice. She urged me to abstain entirely in the first and second trimesters and said an occasional drink in the third was safe. And so I sipped red wine on Christmas, enjoyed a flute of champagne on New Year's Eve, and knocked down a full glass of vino two weeks after my due date and hours away from being induced. Before I was ever hooked up to an IV drip with pitocin, my water broke and I went into labor tipsy. I have always felt a tinge of guilt about the few times I indulged but I figured if my mom drank every night and I turned out OK then what's the harm in three glasses over the course of nine months.In the United States, it was once thought that pregnant women could safely enjoy a drink on a daily basis--but that's not the case anymore. In 1973 researchers at the University of Washington identified Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a group of physical and mental birth defects caused by alcohol consumption. In 1981 the Surgeon General began warning women about the dangers of alcohol and drinking during pregnancy quickly became taboo. But the government has never distinguished between heavy drinking and an occasional glass of wine--so this leaves many women wondering, Will a few sips now and then really damage my baby beyond repair?
The great debate: To drink or not to drink?
"I drank the occasional glass of wine during pregnancy," says San Francisco mom Joanna Pearlstein. "The British tell pregnant women that one drink per week is OK. By comparison the American health system seems bent on scaring pregnant women with all of its 'do this and risk your baby's very survival' instructions. I didn't feel those scare tactics were always best for me (physically and mentally) and my baby.
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