Drinking alcohol during pregnancy amounts to sharing your cocktail with your tiny, developing baby. The same level of alcohol you ingest is also ingested by your baby, says the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

Why is alcohol consumption during pregnancy so bad for your baby? Mainly because alcohol consumption during pregnancy affects your baby's cognitive and physical development. The highest risk from alcohol to your developing baby is during the earliest stages of pregnancy, when baby's critical organs are forming and cells are dividing very rapidly. The more you drink during pregnancy, the greater health risks you and your baby are facing. Since there is no known safe level of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, the ACOG recommends eliminating all alcohol consumption during pregnancy to optimize your chances for a healthy baby.

According to ACOG, if you are a heavy drinker before, during, or after pregnancy, you face a slew of serious health problems such as:

• Vitamin and mineral deficiency
• Damage to your internal organs, including your brain, liver, and digestive system
• Depression
• Increased risk of certain types of cancer

For baby, the effects of alcohol abuse include:

• Miscarriage
• Fetal alcohol syndrome, the most common cause of mental retardation in babies
• Physical defects
• Low birth weight
• Hyperactivity
• Decreased attention span

And the evidence against drinking during pregnancy only continues to mount. It used to be believed that drinking moderate amounts (a drink a day) was relatively safe. But it's only recently been discovered that children of women who drank during pregnancy — even those who had as little as one drink a day — were experiencing developmental problems throughout their childhood and even into adolescence. A 2002 study by the University of Pittsburgh found that children of mothers who drank at least one drink a day during their first trimester weighed, on average, 16 pounds less at the age of 14 than those with no exposure to alcohol in the womb.

The message is clear: Pregnant women should not be drinking at all. If you're pregnant and find yourself unable to stop drinking, don't be ashamed to talk with your obstetrician. She can recommend ways for you to find the help and support you need to stop drinking for your sake, and for your precious baby's sake.

Source: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Pregnancy and Drug Use

Women who use drugs tend to have low self-esteem, little self-confidence, and feel powerless. They often feel lonely and are isolated from support networks. Women from certain cultural backgrounds or who have difficulty with the English language may not know how to find help for their addiction.

Drug use is a serious health problem for many reasons. Women who use drugs risk becoming infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The virus can be spread through needles used to inject drugs. Therefore, women who inject drugs and share needles are especially at risk.

The AIDS virus is also spread through sexual contact; women who have sex with men who inject drugs are at great risk. Today, almost 70 percent of AIDS cases in women are related to either injecting drugs or having sex with a man who injects drugs. AIDS is now the fourth leading cause of death among women.

A mother who uses drugs risks her life and her baby's. When a pregnant woman uses drugs, she and her unborn child face serious health problems. During pregnancy, the drugs used by the mother can enter the baby's bloodstream. The most serious effects on the baby can be HIV infection, AIDS, prematurity, low birth weight, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, small head size, stunted growth, poor motor skills, and behavior problems. A mother's continuing drug use puts her children at risk for neglect, physical abuse, and malnutrition.

However, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) research shows that care and treatment for the pregnant drug abuser can reduce many of the negative effects on the baby.

Friends and family can help relieve these fears for the woman who uses drugs. They can support her by helping her find good drug abuse treatment and by providing child care and transportation. Women can get help for their drug addiction.

It is hard to beat drug addiction. But the woman who uses drugs can get better with the right kind of treatment -- even if she has tried to quit before and failed. Treatment is available, often close to home. The first step is to find out what kind of treatment a woman needs and where she can get it. If you are pregnant, live in the Los Angeles area, and are unable to stop using drugs, call our center at (310) 571-4433 (or 1-800-R-HERE-4-U in So. Cal.) for a referral to a local treatment program. Nationwide, call the free National Drug Information Treatment and Referral Line. 1-800-662-HELP 1-800-66-AYUDA. Women who get treatment can rebuild their lives.

Source: "Women and Drug Abuse," Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH Publication No. 94-3732, 1994. National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information

Pregnancy and HIV / AIDS

The best way to keep yourself and your baby healthy is to avoid getting AIDS in the first place. Risky behaviors, like drug use, having sex with a man who uses drugs, and prostitution can put a woman and her baby at risk for AIDS, drug addiction, and other diseases. A latex or silicone condom can help reduce the risk, but the best solution is to simply not have sex with someone if there's a chance he could be HIV positive.

The good news is a pregnant, HIV positive woman will not usually give her child the disease. There is a 75% chance that the child will be completely unaffected if the HIV+ mother does nothing. The odds of having an uninfected child are less than 8% if the mother is treated with ZDV (AZT) during the pregnancy. For this reason it is recommended that all pregnant women avail themselves of an HIV test as soon as pregnancy is discovered.

Because the child takes on the mother's immune system, the infant will have HIV antibodies, subsequently testing positive after birth. Not until the child is eighteen months old can it be known for certain whether or not he or she is actually infected with the AIDS virus. It has even been documented that some infected infants clear themselves of the AIDS virus. Although most children who do contract AIDS have poor prognoses, some lead healthy and relatively unaffected lives. If the prospect of raising a child with AIDS is too difficult, there are families who are willing to adopt HIV+ babies.

Source of Medical Information: UCLA AIDS Institute Perspectives, 4(1), Winter 1996.

Prenatal Radiation Exposure

In early pregnancy the cells of the unborn child are diving rapidly, and large doses of radiation can be hazardous. Therefore pregnant women should avoid exposure to x-rays if at all possible. If you've had x-rays then later discovered that you were pregnant, it's understandable you would be concerned. The good news is that according to the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), a unborn child exposed to 1 rem of radiation has less than one chance in a thousand of suffering birth defects as a result of the exposure, even if exposed during the most critical stages of development (3 to 8 weeks of pregnancy). The "natural" risk of congenital defect is much greater than any potential added risk from the x-rays.

The risk to the baby is practically nil for the following exposures:

• dental x-rays, even without a lead apron
• diagnostic x-rays of the head, spine, chest or abdomen
• barium enema
• IVP
• living near a nuclear power plant
• working as an x-ray technologist (following good radiation safety guidelines)
• x-rays to the fathers testicles just prior to conception

According to AAPM, "...both the American College of Radiology and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology have adopted a policy that rarely if ever is termination of pregnancy advisable because of the radiation risk arising from diagnostic x-ray examinations."

Source of Technical Information: "A Primer on Low-Level Ionizing Radiation and Its Biological Effects," Published for the American Association of Physicists in Medicine by the American Institute of Physics, AAPM Report No. 18, 335 E. 45th Street, NY, NY 10017, 1986.

For more information on Pregnancy and Radiation, visit the Health Physics Society.

Smoking and Pregnancy

Cigarette smoking during pregnancy can cause serious health problems to an unborn child. Smoking during pregnancy has been linked to premature labor, breathing problems, and fatal illness among infants.

An estimated 430,700 Americans die each year from diseases caused by smoking. Smoking is responsible for an estimated one in five U.S. deaths and costs the U.S. at least $97.2 billion each year in health care costs and lost productivity.

Smoking during pregnancy is estimated to account for 20 to 30 percent of low-birth weight babies, up to 14 percent of preterm deliveries, and some 10 percent of all infant deaths. Maternal smoking during and after pregnancy has been linked to asthma among infants and young children. In 1996, 13.6 percent of mothers were reported to have smoked during pregnancy.

Smokers inhale nicotine and carbon monoxide, which reach the baby through the placenta and prevent the fetus from getting the nutrients and oxygen needed to grow. Secondhand smoke also adds a risk to pregnancy. Breast milk often contains whatever is in the woman's body. If the woman smokes, the baby ingests the nicotine in her breast milk.

Reducing frequency of smoking may not benefit the baby. A pregnant woman who reduces her smoking pattern or switches to lower tar cigarettes may inhale more deeply or take more puffs to get the same amount of nicotine as before.

The most effective way to protect the fetus is to quit smoking. If a woman plans to conceive a child in the near future, quitting is essential. A woman who quits within the first three or four months of pregnancy can lower the chances of her baby being born premature or with health problems related to smoking. Pregnancy is a great time for a woman to quit. No matter how long she has been smoking, her body benefits from her quitting because it lessens her chances of developing future tobacco-related health problems, such as lung and heart disease, and cancer.

Source: American Lung Association Fact Sheet, "Smoking and Pregnancy," September 1999