Pajiba

*pregnancy

Dammit, it's those cans!

"Nice rack" is the first thing I thought when I saw that picture. Of course, they are right there out in front, you kinda can't miss 'em.

Having said that, I agree with her. One cup a day isn't gonna do anything terrible. I love how people think that when you're gestating, they have the right to tell you what to do. It's not enough for them that you're "choosing life," now they think they get to tell you how to do that, too. If I was pregnant and someone tried to scold me for drinking coffee, my most polite reaction would be to tell them to fuck right off.

If a pregnant chick is shooting up or getting hammered every night, sure, throw her a look of condemnation. Anything short of that, I advise you to leave her be.

Julia Roberts has always been a hosebeast. Remember what she did to Kiefer Sutherland? How she came to be with Danny Moder (and how she behaved towards his then-wife) was pretty unsavory, too. That's not to defend the infidelities of these men, of course, but her actions were pretty reprehensible. So now she's a hypocrite to boot!

The whole zero tolerance, no alcohol/no caffeine thing relating to pregnancy is a puzzler to me. In Paris, Rome, Berlin, etc., one sees pregnant women behaving normally, i.e., sipping espresso or a glass of wine, even smoking a cig, and no one freaks out. They're not swilling it down, but it's a far cry from the beverage nazis here who call social services if a knocked up gal has a sip of chardonnay.

Clearly the science indicates heightened risk from substantial alcohol or caffeine consumption, but I'm quite skeptical that there's a significantly higher incidence of birth defects in western Europe than in the U.S., even though women there frequently do not forego alcohol and caffeine entirely during pregnancy.

What is it about U.S. culture that makes a lot of people so extremist about things like this? Paddy, AtO, causabon, what's the practice in the Isles?

Bleh, don't believe the hype ladies, my mom went drinking ALLLLLLLL he time when she was pregnant with me and look how well I turned out...

Socalled - There's a great book called Medicine and Culture by Lynn Payer that describes how cultural differences in health care attitudes shape perceptions of health. One of the points she talks about in the chapter on the US is how we have an all or nothing medical culture, and are frequently unable to decipher gray areas of indecision. One example is how when an American has a medical issue they usually insist on a diagnosis and a course of treatment in order to be satisfied. Other cultures don't feel these are always necessary. We will also choose the most aggressive form of treatment possible even if it only raises our chances of survival by a couple of percentage points, and doesn't significantly improve our quality of life. On the flip side, once we find out something is supposedly bad for us, we ban it all together instead of finding a happy medium. Examples of this abound in our dieting tendencies and the way we demonize the food group du jour. Salt, fat, carbs, alcohol, etc. are all examples of things that we deemed as evil, and then further research showed we actually needed in moderate amounts for a health diet. Anyway, it's a great book and I highly recommend it. It will totally change the way you view our health care system.

It also doesn't help that our medical establishment has to pander to the lowest common denominator, like roses mentioned above. It is insulting to be treated like an idiot who can't understand subtleties.

Yay, Helena B.C. (who I always thought was gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous). Oh, how I detested being infantilized whilst pregnant. Because there's no test cases available (who is going to turn their womb over for experimentation just to see what happens?), the prevailing wisdom is that, for nine months, the mother-to-be must not ingest caffeine (this one eludes me entirely), lunch meat, alcohol of any kind, remedies for one's discomfort of any kind, etc. I was going to get my toenails done and some dude I work with said "You're not supposed to do that." I seriously almost put my disheveled foot right up his ass

Oh, Alex et al. You think the shit is over once the baby's out? Oh, no. Wait until the commentary while you're nursing or, worse, if you decide not to nurse.

From what I've come to understand when studying Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in university is that no-one knows how much (or little) alcohol has to be consumed during pregnancy to cause damage. So, given that we don't know- why take the risk? I don't condone people trying to tell women what to do with their own bodies, but I think when it comes to a physician making recommendations for the health of the mother and child, that's pretty reasonable.