Beth A. Bailey, professor at East Tennessee University did a study on alcohol consumption during pregnancy that addressed many of the risk aspects of spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, pre-term birth and sudden infant death syndrome. Spontaneous abortion is defined as when the baby dies in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Several different studies cited showed slightly different results of the amount of alcohol necessary to create a correlation to spontaneous abortion. An example of this correlation that has been seen is that three drinks daily increase your risk of spontaneous abortion by three times. Another study discussed here showed that five or more drinks per week resulted in a five times increase in spontaneous abortions. The next part of this article discussed stillbirths, which are defined as the baby dying after 20 weeks of pregnancy. This sections tells us that a study of over 600,000 human births showed that any amount of alcohol consumption increased the stillbirth likelyhood by 40%. Preterm births and sudden infant death syndrome are the last topics discussed and they are defined as delivery of the baby in less than 37 weeks and the sudden unexplained death of a baby less than 1 month old, respectively. The studies listed on these topics have mixed results as some have shown a link to alcohol …show more content…
And that is the negative stigma that we, as a society, put on pregnant women who drink that prevent them from seeking help when they need it. A study by Leizille Jacobs, professor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa describes many of the barriers that exist for women to get treatment. There were many common themes that were found in this study that lead women to deny they have a drinking problem. The most common is the typical struggle that alcohol helps you deal with problems by forgetting about them. However, we know how detrimental this is to your