I don't understand why I see so many frum women drinking while they're pregnant. They always say "Its only for kiddish..." or "Oh, its just a little, its not dangerous." or something to that effect. Where that legitimization came from, is also beyond me.
Drinking just a little is just as dangerous to an unborn child as drinking a 40 oz Heineken. But even if it were allowed, why would any woman even risk the chance of deforming her child in-utero? Thats like saying. "Oh, a little drop of cyanide might not kill me, why don't I just drink it anyway? its only a little." I'm pretty sure if lethally poisonous Japanese blowfish was kosher, these types of women would eat it during pregnancy too. Again, this ignorance is a product of neglect. The neglectful part, being an uninformed mom-to-be. These women don't do any reading on whats not okay to do when they're pregnant. They rely on Bubbe's story about how she rubbed a little mashke on her gums while she was pregnant to relieve nausea.
Pick up practically any book on pregnancy and you'll find a chapter on FASDs (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders). Half the parenting mistakes these women make from conception til the chuppa could be avoided with just a little reading. Of course, as I mentioned in my post on uninformed pregnancy, they just write it off as something they don't need to concern themselves with or just ask mom who most likely drank when she was pregnant too.
By the way, this also applies to nursing mothers. Alcohol is directly transferred to the baby through breast milk, so unless Mom wants a drunk baby, she shouldn't drink until she stops nursing. There is a thing that some nursing women do called "Pump and Dump" which is basically disposing of the milk produced right after the drinking, but I wouldn't even consider that to be okay. If she dumped 98% of the boozed milk and even 2% got into the baby's system, that would still be bad. Again, why risk it?
No its not okay to drink while you're pregnant. Not even a little. The risk of abnormalities and or death is not worth it. It sounds crazy that some people actually need to be told this, but they do. If you ever see a pregnant woman drinking, stop her. If she resists, don't be polite. Make a scene. You'd be doing her unborn child a great favor.
