Drinking Alcohol During Pregnancy – Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs), which are a group of conditions. These conditions may include: abnormal facial features, growth problems, and central nervous system (CNS) problems, or problems with learning, memory, attention span, communication, vision, or hearing. Often children with FASDs have a hard time in school and trouble getting along with others.
What is It About Drinking Alcohol During Pregnancy That Causes Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASDs)
It is about the brain development that occurs in utero.
And that’s because everything an infant, child, teen or adult does requires neural networks. Basically, neuroal networks are neurons in the brain, also called brain cells, talking to one another and then to and from other neurons throughout the body via the nervous system. This “talking” is done through an electro-chemical signaling process. This process is also referred to as neural circuity, neural networks, and/or brain wiring.
Infants are born with about 100 billion brain cells. This is roughly the number of brain cells humans have as adults. Now imagine if the majority of those brain cells, or neurons, were wired at birth. That would mean an infant is born capable of doing all the things an adult does.
Clearly this is not the case.
But, the fact a newborn comes out with basic survival capabilities, like breathing, sleeping, sucking, beating heart, relieving self of waste…, means there is brain development – brain wiring – occurring during pregnancy. In other words, a child would not be able to suck, breathe, sleep, have a beating heart or relieve themselves of waste without some level of brain development. And that’s because everything an infant, child, teen or adult does requires brain cells, or neurons, talking to one another and to and from others throughout their body via their nervous system.
Brain Wiring En Utero – Drinking Alcohol During Pregnancy – Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can result in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs). The is because of the way ethyl alcohol chemicals in alcoholic beverages interrupt normal fetal brain wiring and development.
If a mother drinks during pregnancy, the ethyl alcohol chemicals in the alcoholic beverages she drinks enter the mother’s bloodstream and pass through to her fetus through the placenta. But the developing fetus does not have a fully developed liver. That means its liver is unable to metabolize the ethyl alcohol chemicals that pass through, which is what makes a mother’s drinking during pregnancy harmful to her baby.
The ethyl alcohol chemicals interrupt the chemical portion of the brain’s electro-chemical signaling processes. In other words, they interrupt a developing fetus’s normal brain wiring processes. They can also damage the neurons, or brain cells, themselves.
These harms are what can cause the various conditions of FASDs.
It’s Not Just the Mother Who Should Be Concerned
Boyfriends and husbands can also be affected by a mother’s drinking alcohol during pregnancy, if they are the father of that mother’s child. To that end, “Men also play a role in preventing alcohol-related birth defects by understanding the risk of prenatal alcohol use, encouraging healthy behaviors, and minimizing or abstaining from alcohol themselves in support of the birth mother,” according to the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Resources
To learn more about FASDs, check out the following resources:
- Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s Basics About FASDs
- National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS)
And if you are an expectant mother wanting help with a drinking problem, check out:
- National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS) Expectant Mothers
Lisa Frederiksen
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