When I quit, I didn’t have any physical side effects, and I used pretty heavily for a long time (about 1/2 oz. a week for years). I did miss it sometimes, but I never had trouble sleeping, jitteriness, or trouble sleeping. I was actually quite a bit less jittery because it used to make me kinda paranoid and wanting to talk about whatever got in my head…I probably seemed a lot calmer when I wasn’t smoking.
Seems to me that the most compelling answer is that if the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) person finds out that she is using illegal drugs while pregnant, they could put her in jail for the duration of her pregnancy and then immediately take her baby away from her once it’s born.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6470053/The-detention-confinement-and-incarceration.html
L & k,
BaileyC
bufftabby, and I say this with all due compassion and respect, but you’re really going about this the wrong way 'round. A good scientist (hell, a right thinking person) doesn’t begin a search for truth with “I know it’s a terrible, selfish thing to do,” they start with, “I wonder what the effects are” or “I predict the effects will be…” and then you look at ALL the data you can find before reaching a conclusion.
pantheon’s provided the same links I was prepared to give, with the most damning evidence I’ve seen to date.
Hmm, it looks like maybe it’s not the end of the world to do so. It looks like pot may not be the healthiest thing for a fetus, but isn’t on par with cigarettes. Hey, I’m happy as hell to be wrong about that.
I can’t resist… how about your short term memory? 
I have to wonder why, then, if it’s so easy to give up, why people don’t just give it up during pregnancy? It’s nine months, and presumably a wanted baby you’re bringing into the world. Motherhood entails all kinds of sacrifices. True, there may be no connection proven yet, but honestly, why take the chance?
I would hope she would be willing to give it up for nine months too (um, and breastfeeding if applicable) out of concern for legal ramifications as mentioned above, if nothing else. My ex did during both pregnancies, and we were daily users. Another thing is- if anything goes wrong, it’s one less variable, easily in your control, that you can remove from having to wonder and worry about/regret forever.
Personal choices during pregnancy, up to and including abortion, are a minefield of ethical dilemnas. 
When my ex was tempted, I asked her at what age we would just allow the child to smoke joints straight up? Shotgun 'em hits at 3 months old? Hookah with a nipple at 6 months? Teach 'em to roll before or after kindergarten? All of these seem appalling? Then why give them THC in utero?
Seemed to work well enough to distract her through the craving/temptation until she settled for some chocolate/sex/pickles/mocha milkshake/footrub- whatever the next craving was lol.
Why leave the house? Why get out of bed? Surely the safest pregnancy would be one of total bed rest with 20 minutes of low impact aerobic exercise on a plush mat once a day.
Because at the end of the day (and the beginning of it, too), pregnancy doesn’t mean I give up my body. There are some pleasures in life that, as they seem to do little or no harm, it’s not worth it to give up. It’s also possible that marijuana is used by some people (“self-medicating”) for diseases for which available and legal drugs are extremely ill-advised during pregnancy because we know for certain they cause problems - nausea, migraines and depression being the most obvious.
And I say this as someone who *did *give up pot while pregnant. But I didn’t give up chocolate or lunchmeat or soft cheeses - all things which have been suggested women give up. I even had the occasional glass of wine. Absent clear and unequivocal evidence of harm, you and I and Joe on the street have absolutely no right to get involved with her decision.
I know you, personally, see a lot of scary things in your line of work, and you work for a great agency which is doing wonderful things to raise awareness of how women can have the best odds pregnancy possible, and I’m grateful that The March of Dimes is around to do such great work. Their reducing rates of SIDS so very dramatically secures them a slot in the Good Guys hall of fame for me forever. But there are plenty of real dangers we can still work on eliminating, nevermind the ones like this that are highly questionable and objectionable primarily because of ignorance and prejudice, not science.
WhyNot you are making this into a slippery slope analogy and I never said anything remotely of the sort. I do not see how voluntarily inhaling a known drug is at all equivalant to getting up or leaving the house. I ask only in regards to smoking pot, and nothing else.
Here is what I am saying.
- Currently, pot is illegal. This is not the debate. But that adds another element to smoking it while pregnant. Your counter-examples, cheese and meat and wine, are not illegal.
- It is unknown what the effects of pot on the fetus are. I personally am quite of the opinion that pot is fairly harmless to an adult human being. A fetus is not the same as an adult human being obviously. However we do know what the effects are of being caught with an illegal drug.
- Whenever I talk to pot smokers they ALL say “I can give it up anytime.”
Given the risks inherent in smoking an illegal drug and not knowing if it is dangerous or not, it seems to me to make total and complete sense to give it up for the nine months you are pregnant. Not knowing does not equal “Safe”.
I disagree that pregnancy does not mean you give up your body. What the hell else does it mean? If you are carrying a wanted baby to term, why would you not do everything in your power to make sure the baby is healthy and that you won’t be, say, arrested or forced to pay a fine during the pregnancy.
I do not feel at all that we should legislate “no pot use during pregnancy”. I do argue that until all of the facts are in, it should be recommended to quit toking up.
Qualification: I was a serious pot-head for more years than some of you have been alive, though I haven’t smoked in five years now.
Assertion: I notice that every study that declares negative consequences to smoking marijuana speaks of using amounts that I have NEVER known anyone to use for a long time period. To be sure, there may be some individuals out there who smoke that much weed, but they are a very very tiny minority.
The worst I have ever seen was my ex-wife smoking an ounce of decent weed in six days because she was completely fucking insane and was pulling another “I’m doing something irrational and stupid because I really need attention and sympathy” stunt. That was resolved by me pointing out that I didn’t have the money to buy any more for her and that she would have to go without for almost two weeks before we could get more.
Disregarding the illegal part giving up pot is on the same order of magnitude as giving up anything inhaled that you do not know the fetal effects of. BBQ smoke, city smog, talcum powder, shower steam with your favorite shampoo. Speaking of shampoo – do you know if any particular shampoo brand is safe for the fetus? Isn’t it easy to just give up shampoo for nine months rather than take the chance? I think hair products have a much worse historical track record of being unsafe – and face it, nobody needs shampoo.
No? Sounds like it, or close to it.
The illegality and the legal repercussions have nothing to do with the medical consequences under discussion here.
There’s a reason for that: 99% of them can. I’ve never known anyone who couldn’t, and I’ve known a lot of people addicted to other substances and activities.
irrelevant
it’s not for lack of data
People have been looking for a connection between in utereo cannabis exposure and pregnancy complications for a long time. The best they can come up with is it might make the baby a little small and cranky, possibly.
And here’s our fundamental divide; the rest of the disagreement stems from this, I think. As long as we disagree here, we cannot reach accord.
And there’s our slippery slope. “Everything in your power”.
I agree, but we shouldn’t waste our time and resources on it, either. We shouldn’t belabor the point or tell our friends they’re being “terrible” and “selfish” if they decide the risks aren’t great enough to change their behavior. Focus on folic acid, treating vaginitis (which is associated with premature labor) and not taking aspirin in your third trimester - those are documentable preventable dangers that are worth worrying about which women don’t seem to know. I’m sure there are others, but I’m not convinced marijuana use is one of them.
Well, that’s obviously gotten worse, though I think that may have more to do with aging than giving up the reefer.
Here are cites to some studies that suggest it can:
http://www.drugabuse.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol15N1/Evidence.html
[quote]
Dr. Elena Kouri and her colleagues at the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital found that long-term heavy marijuana users became more aggressive during abstinence from marijuana than did former or infrequent users. Previous studies of withdrawal symptoms have relied largely on patients’ subjective reports of a range of symptoms, Dr. Kouri notes. “We studied measurable changes in one specific symptom-aggression,” she says.
The researchers recruited two groups of male and female volunteers: 17 current long-term users of marijuana and a control group of 20 infrequent or former users. Current long-term users were smoking marijuana daily at the time of recruitment and had smoked marijuana at least 5,000 times-the equivalent of smoking once each day for more than 13 years. The infrequent or former users had not smoked more than 50 times in their life and had smoked less than once per month in the past year, or had formerly smoked at least daily but had not smoked more than once per week for the past 3 months.[/quoite]
and
Really? You’re citing drugabuse.gov as a credible source on drugs? :smack:
No, **Captain Amazing **is citing two studies from the peer-reviewed journal Psychopharmacology. Most people don’t have access to peer reviewed journals, so the link is to a summary, but the citations are there if you’d like to read the original studies.
Chocolate? Lunch meat? Soft cheese? Why on earth would anybody suggest you had to give these up during pregnancy?
That is, it’s one thing if these substances suddenly don’t agree with you. But surely nobody’s claiming some harm to the fetus from lunch meat.
(Obviously, a steady diet of only lunch meat wouldn’t be optimal.)
Actually, I believe that pregnant women are advised to avoid lunch meat because it has a slight risk of carrying Listeria, which can harm a developing fetus. Soft cheese is banned for the same reason.
Well, if you’re worried about things, you could research some of them to see if they’re safe. Talcum powder, for example, isn’t because it increases a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer.
Out of curiosity, why did you give up pot during your pregnancy, then?
Also, this particular person respects me and my opinion, and I’m sure that she would say that I do have every right to warn her if I think she’s doing something dangerous, and I would hope she feels like she has the same right and duty toward me. As it stands, I am going to communicate to her the realistic information that I’ve been provided in this thread. Then, of course, it will be her decision. And I will still have every right to feel about that choice, any way I want.