(And yes, I looked for a good answer online and half the time you know how these things with pregnancy are, "OH MY GOD WHY WOULD YOU EVEN CONSIDER TAKING THE TINIEST RISK WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU SOMEBODY CALL SOCIAL SERVICES. So I want, you know, the real science but I also want your experiences, which is why I put it in this forum.)
The thing is, I’ve got Mirena, so while we’ve been going back and forth on the kid thing we can’t do like normal people and just get a little sloppy with the birth control. I’d have to go get something uninstalled. And that’s, like, a huge big step. (Although suddenly last night my husband says “let’s watch this movie about pregnant people”… I think maybe we’ve sort of decided. Maybe. But I’m sure we don’t agree on when. Also, Away We Go is great and you should go watch it.)
So, let’s say that hypothetically I want to do this. I wouldn’t say I’m a heavy drinker, but I almost always have a beer or a glass of wine with dinner. But it’s not like I expect to get knocked up the first time at bat or anything. (Although that would be great because I just can’t deal with the idea of getting periods again, I’m so freaking spoiled.) If I get the Mirena taken out I’ll start taking prenatals, but do I have to quit the sauce? Should I? Did you?
Well, drinking before the fertilized egg is implanted will not have any effect, as alcohol doesn’t stay in the bloodstream very long so there is no way for it to reach an unimplanted egg. Implantation happens approx. 2 weeks after conception. Which is usually in the same general time-frame as your period would be, were you not pregnant.
On average (YMMV hugely):
you have a period. Then you have 10-20 days, then ovulation.
Then, if the egg is fertilized it takes another 10-20 days to implant. Then you can get a positive pregnancy test.
If the egg is not fertilized, you get your period 10-20 days later. Repeat.
So you can be pretty safe drinking up until your period is due, then when you’re sure you’re not pregnant, start up again. I personally would avoid binge drinking in the latter half of my cycle, just in case implantation is early, but I don’t think a glass of wine or two would be an issue. Some doctors say this is fine throughout pregnancy anyway. I’m not sure about that, and didn’t drink during either of my pregnancies, but that’s different than before even being pregnant.
Note that this is all referring to the safety of the fetus. Alcohol may cause difficulty conceiving (I have no idea, but I’ve heard), so if you have trouble it might be something to look at after a few months.
No need to stop, IMO. You probably wouldn’t want to drink heavily, but one drink a day is not a problem. Even if you do get pregnant and drink before you know, you can’t really fuck up the baby for the first, I forget exactly, but few weeks I think, until the umbilical cord is up and running. At first it’s just living off the yolk sac.
Don’t be one of those annoying women like my sister who refuses to use the microwave when you’re pregnant
I drink a little (no more than one a day) during the follicular phase and the first half of the luteal phase. Around 7 days past ovulation, which is when the blastocyst might implant, I go dry until my period comes again.
Or like a friend of mine who was trying to get pregnant and found out that a chef had used wine in a tomato sauce she consumed, so she made herself vomit it up
Omg! Was she just doing it for fun (like, “look at me, I’m pregnant and special”) or did she somehow actually believe that could really be dangerous?
Pregnant women are so annoying. My sister also read something that said that using the vacuum might be dangerous (don’t ask me…) so she didn’t vacuum at first but I think she might have gone back on that eventually because her husband had different ideas than her about how often things needed vacuuming.
At which point, if the blastocyst does implant, you would be magically 3 weeks along already.
Right at the beginning like that, I would be more concerned with getting enough Folic Acid and avoiding (more than 200 mg per day of) caffeine and aspirin, which can affect the formation of the placenta. Also, if TTC, avoid real Sudafed, it will dry up all your mucosa, not just your nose.
To answer the “Did you?” question – no, I didn’t stop, and I drank occasionally throughout my pregnancy. I was mindful of it while trying to convince, I mean, I didn’t drink A LOT and I drank less than I typically would have otherwise.
Anecdotal answer, I did not stop and was super surprised to find myself 6 weeks preggo after only 3 months of no longer taking birth control. I wan’t being careful with my drinking, smoking or caffeine because everyone said not to get my hopes up and that it might take a year to conceive after so long on the pill. Everything was fine and my 14 month old is healthy. I guess the takeaway is that what “everyone says” can be totally wrong, but it is in your best interest to not drink to excess. (Good advice generally, really.)
Once I knew I had a few very small drinks in the 3rd trimester, no more than a cup of caffeinated drink a day, and quit cigarettes cold turkey the minute I realized I was pregnant.
And while you’re at it prepare yourself for smarty know-it-alls who monitor your everything once you are pregnant. “You’re eating BRIE OH MY GOD!?” Yeah, see right here the word pasteurized? Or are we in France all the sudden?
You might or might not have to go off them while you’re actually pregnant… but it’s a good idea to discontinue antihistamines while you’re trying, for the abovementioned reason.
Like Blackberry said, nature has this covered: for the first few weeks the embryo’s living off the yolk sac, so it’s not being nourished through your bloodstream, and what you eat and drink doesn’t get to it. By the time that changes, you’ll know you’re pregnant, assuming that you have a relatively normal cycle and/or are paying attention.
I didn’t change anything till I actually got pregnant (I was in my mid-thirties, we knew it could take a while or not happen at all, we had no intention of shaping everything we did for the next few years around a baby who might or might not ever exist). After that, I would probably have had a small drink every month or so and a coffee a day, except that alcohol tasted bleeurghhh and even the smell of coffee was way worse. So I had one sip of prosecco as a Christmas toast, and that was it.
I think the sternest warnings are most applicable to people with irregular periods. You certainly do not want to find yourself twelve weeks along and boozing it up, and some people have such strange cycles (and can be thrown off by implantation bleeding) that they genuinely don’t have any clue when they are or are not fertile or potentially pregnant. Since people and their awareness of their cycles vary so greatly, the blanket warning makes a lot of sense.
But it can take a while to conceive-- it takes some people years! For people with predictable cycles, if you track your ovulation and take ample pregnancy tests at the appropriate times, I personally think you can drink with little risk. To be absolutely safe, you’ll want to avoid drinking some time right before ovulation, and not resume until you are certain you didn’t get pregnant that cycle. Definitely be careful with the timing of the pregnancy test, however. You don’t want to jump the gun and go party after a negative test that you accidentally took a day too early. And when in doubt, ask your OB-GYN. In pregnancy, there is often no single consensus on anything, so it makes a lot of sense to find an OB-GYN you trust and just stick with their recommendations.
Either way, you are going to beat yourself up about something or another. I’m spent most of my pregnancy in a cold sweat convinced I’ve somehow harmed my baby through things like my morning shower (too hot), grabbing the wrong sandwich (was that feta cheese?), sex (how is it not getting shaken baby syndrome?), and of course worrying (can’t it feel my stress hormones or something?) Pregnancy is not a pleasant thing for the mildly neurotic.
She seemed to genuinely believe it was dangerous, even before conception. She was also annoyingly neurotic about a lot of stuff, though, so I should have just taken the incident as par for the course. She now, many years later, has a wonderful daughter (who is turning out to be even more neurotic than her mom)
