Disputes about the dangers of alcohol during pregnancy are serious. Despite the arguments, some mothers allow themselves a glass of wine, if not daily, then quite often. How can alcohol affect the unborn child or the well-being of the expectant mother during pregnancy?
Pregnancy is a time of restrictions – products, bad habits. For the sake of the future baby, you can put a pause in your usual lifestyle. And experts strongly recommend not to drink alcohol during pregnancy, even in small quantities.
Continuing to form, the liver of the future newborn does not yet contain an enzyme that can destroy ethanol and remove it from the body – alcohol dehydrogenase.
Alcohol very easily penetrates the placental barrier and affects the placenta, which makes it difficult for the blood flow and the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the child. The child’s development is disrupted.
In addition to harming the fetus, alcohol reduces the body’s defenses and the pregnant woman-this opens the door to infections and viruses, and also makes complications after the disease more likely. And diseases can provoke early childbirth, hypoxia of the child, as well as disorders of its development.
All this applies not only to complex drinks, but also to seemingly harmless beer or wine, and even in small doses.
The harm of alcohol begins from the very conception, when healthy female cells must resist the pathological cells of the male seminal fluid. Alcohol reduces the natural defense, and not the healthiest sperm can get into the egg, which will give serious defects in the development of the child – both physical and intellectual.
This is followed by a relatively safe period for taking alcohol, until the fertilized cell is fixed to the walls of the uterus and begins to feed from the mother’s blood. You can easily miss this moment and put your unborn baby at risk, because alcohol is especially dangerous in the 1st trimester, when all the organs are laid.
Alcohol reduces digestibility:
– zinc, while during pregnancy the need for it only increases – it reduces the risk of termination of pregnancy;
– vitamin E, which helps to properly lay the organs of the embryo;
– folic acid, which is especially important for the formation of the neural tube in the fetus in the first 12 weeks;
– iron, which affects the level of hemoglobin and proper nutrition of the child through the placenta of the mother.
If you used alcohol and did not know about your pregnancy, you should tell the doctor about it, who will monitor you for 9 months – he will conduct the necessary tests and tests and will be able to correct the development of the fetus, if necessary.