Alcohol in Pregnancy. Safe or Not?

With a number of pregnant friends and friends who are trying to conceive I hear a lot about whether it's safe to drink whilst pregnant. Most of them believe or have been told by their Ob/Gyn or general practitioner that it is safe to drink small quantities of alcohol during pregnancy.   Many of these friends also believe (and have advised me during my own efforts to fall pregnant) that it is completely safe to drink significant quantities of alcohol in the first six weeks or before pregnancy has been confirmed.

As a Science graduate this seemed highly unlikely to me…after all if one or two glasses of wine can make me, a 65kg fully grown adult,  feel a little tipsy (and can impair even slightly my driving abilities etc) then surely it would have an even greater impact on something a squillion times smaller than myself.  I also wondered how, given how differently alcohol affects different people, there could possibly be an absolute “safe” or guideline amount to drink during pregnancy. 

Now don’t get me wrong - I am no wowser who is against the consumption of alcohol. I am an Australian (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie Oi Oi Oi and all that)…and, as you may be aware, we are known to love a drink or twenty. So I decided to do some research and try and find out, once and for all, whether my friends and I really could safely consume the occasional glass of chardonnay during pregnancy. Here is what I found: 

When a pregnant woman drinks, the alcohol in her blood passes through the placenta and reaches the baby. This means that when you drink, your baby drinks. However the impact of your alcohol consumption on him or her is far more significant that the impact it has on you...after all you are significantly larger and you are not in the midst of developing your heart, lungs, brain, limbs etc.