More Pregnant Women are Drinking

Donna is four months pregnant - and she started drinking one month ago. She's totally unapologetic about this.

"My therapist recommended wine [for stress]," says Donna, 32, a Brooklyn mother of two. Her midwife also recommended wine, she says, after her first trimester.

"I've had two glasses in the last nine days," she says cheerfully.

Still, not everyone is supportive of her choice. "My boyfriend is not happy about it," she says. "My aunt said I shouldn’t do it." And Donna, who isn’t ashamed of her drinking, is still so worried about the stigma she doesn’t want her last name to appear in this article.

Drinking while pregnant is perhaps the last big taboo for moms-to-be. Much like breastfeeding and co-sleeping.

But in New York, a growing number of pregnant women are saying, “Bottoms up!”

Tired of the zero-tolerance hysteria — no alcohol, soft cheeses, fish or hair dye — that treats pregnancy like an affliction, they’re embracing a European attitude and indulging in the occasional glass of vino.

“The truth is, if you look at who’s born with fetal alcohol syndrome, their mothers were alcoholics — not one drink a week” women, says Dr. Randi Hutter Epstein, a mom of four and the author of “Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank.”

“I feel strongly that all of our anti-alcohol messages are just targeting the wrong audience,” she says, meaning healthy moms without dependence problems.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises “no amount of alcohol consumption can be considered safe during pregnancy.” Still, research has found that light drinking is reasonably safe. A study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology last year found that children whose moms had “one to two” drinks per week during pregnancy were at no more risk of cognitive deficits than those who had zero alcohol.

Furthermore, a French study published in 2008 found that more than 50 percent of French women drank alcohol at least once while pregnant. The same study, which appeared in a May 2008 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, found that only 12 percent of American women did.

During her first pregnancy, April Peveteaux, a 38-year-old Brooklynite, was nervous about drinking: “There was still that fear in the back of my mind that I could do something to hurt the baby.” However, “I was four months pregnant when I got married,” says the writer at CafeMom.com and now a mother of two. “I thought, ‘I’m definitely having a glass of Champagne at my wedding.’ ”

During her honeymoon in Ireland, she learned about cultural differences regarding pregnancy and drinking while flipping through parenting books that advised no more than two drinks . . . per day. “I was laughing,” she says. “But it taught me a big lesson: I’m going to relax.”

Other expectant moms, such as Donna, are quietly being given the go-ahead by medical experts. Stephanie Korenman’s doctor prescribed alcohol after her amniocentesis test, telling her to “go home and drink a glass of wine,” because it calmed down painful uterine contractions that can result from the procedure. “Of course I was nervous, but it was my third kid,” said Korenman, 38, a Manhattan attorney. She says she was less hyper-vigilant than the first time around — plus, she did her own research to make sure it was safe. “I’m Orthodox [Jewish], so on Friday nights, I’d have just a little bit of wine — like half a shot glass,” she says. “Although I do know people who would say, ‘Not even that.’ ”

Dr. Epstein’s own doctor, by contrast, wasn’t concerned about the occasional sip. “My doctor said, ‘Go about your life and don’t worry about wine or anything,’” says Epstein, recalling her first pregnancy 10 years ago. On a trip to France while she was expecting, “We’d go out to dinner, and the waitress would show me the wine list, and I’d say, ‘I’m pregnant,’ ” says Epstein. “And she’d say, ‘Congrats, what kind of wine do you want?’

For Peveteaux, the freedom to relax with her husband and have a beer was important for her mental well-being.

“It made me feel more like a person,” she says, “rather than just a vessel.”

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