Vicky, 25, is married and between seven and eight months pregnant. Her husband and his family have been refusing to go for antenatal with her so, despite being only two months away from her due date, Vicky still has not gone for a visit.
Vicky is also a habitual social drinker who drinks more than four units of alcohol a day with her friends. When questioned by those around her why she drinks so much while pregnant, Vicky’s answer has been that “this pregnancy [her third] was mistake and I have tried to abort it on several occasions, but have failed.”
Vicky says she has even threatened to kill herself were it not for her other children who are aged two and six. Vicky has also offered her unborn baby to her mother-in-law for adoption.
Vicky’s story is not unique but shows an increase in the numbers of young women aged 18 to 30 who abuse alcohol when pregnant. It’s a trend we are noticing in our compounds in peri-urban [the outskirts of an urban area] and rural areas of Zambia. Why they are drinking is a major question, one that will have many answers. In Vicky’s case, she is clearly unhappy about her situation. But whatever the stories are behind each women’s decision to drink while pregnant, the damage being done to the foetuses is clear
Pregnant women who regularly drink alcohol or drink it to excess can permanently damage the foetus, leading to abnormal facial features, abnormal growth and learning difficulties. Yet many of the pregnant women we come across do not believe drinking while pregnant will cause any damage.
Research on the effects of alcohol abuse shows that damage to a foetus, occurs to the genetic material of the foetus, especially in the early days of development. Between 16 to 24 days old, the organ formation in the embryo is affected, causing structural abnormalities such as smaller head size, cleft palate, congenital heart disease and mild to moderate learning difficulties. This occurs in about 40% of babies whose mothers drank to excess while pregnant.
Women who drink one to two units of alcohol daily have an increased risk of spontaneous abortion over that of non-drinking women. The use of ten or more units of alcohol daily greatly increases all the forgoing risks and is referred to as Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, which includes a wide range of abnormalities.
What is surprising is that during health talks at antenatal clinics pregnant women are not told about the dangers they expose their unborn children to when drinking alcohol. If sensitization campaigns are not done in communities where women abuse alcohol we will continue to see an increase in babies born with the various abnormalities without knowing the cause.
If the sensitization is to have impact, documentaries and other information, communication, and education material should be used to make people understand the possible dangers they will put their unborn babies through should they continue drinking
Risks of drinking while pregnant:
- low birth weight
- failure to thrive
- developmental delay
- epilepsy
- poor coordination/fine motor skills
- poor socialization skills, such as difficulty building and maintaining friendships and relating to groups
- lack of imagination or curiosity learning difficulties, including
poor memory, inability to understand concepts such as time and money, poor language comprehension, poor problem-solving skills - Behavioral problems, including hyperactivity, inability to concentrate, social withdrawal, stubbornness, impulsiveness, and anxiety.