Is Coffee Safe During Pregnancy?
Many expectant mothers to be are concerned about what foods they can and can’t eat as well as what drinks. Many times there is a solid line drawn for you to adhere to including no mayonnaise because it contains raw egg. It sounds simple enough but one area that can often be very confusing is coffee. Is coffee really safe to drink during the stages of pregnancy? If you are pregnant or trying to conceive and you drink coffee on a regular basis do you have to give it up? Being pregnant can tire you out as it is without having to give up your get and go coffee drink in the morning.
It has been reported that coffee in moderation is perfectly safe during pregnancy so why is there still so much confusion on this issue? Well, the key word is moderation here, because moderation is a relative term so it can means different things to different people. Someone who drinks large quantities of coffee regularly may think moderation is a quantity much larger than someone who rarely drinks coffee at all. There also seems to be a new conflicting study almost every week about this substance and how it affects us during the stages of pregnancy. While one expert warns to stay off caffeine entirely, another says that a few drinks a day are okay. It can also be hard to monitor exactly how much caffeine we are consuming each day as caffeine is present in tea, coffee, fizzy drinks and more and coffee itself comes in all manner of different sizes and concentrations.
In the past studies have shown that caffeine doe sin fact have a negative impact on pregnancy, however these studies are under scrutiny today. One such study, commenced in 1980, exposed rats to caffeine during pregnancy in which the results showed a reduction in fetal weight. However, it is worth noting that rats as a species are more sensitive to these types of substances and in this particular study an excess of caffeine was used. In fact, the proportional equivalent of 50-70 cups of coffee was given on a daily basis to the rats. This means the rats were subjected to an unusually large proportion of caffeine, a substance which they are highly sensitive to and this test cannot therefore be compared to the affect of caffeine on the human body.
More recent scientific study has shown that consuming caffeine during all the stages of pregnancy is perfectly safe if consumed in moderation and in a sensible fashion. That means you don’t have to give up caffeine entirely but try to limit yourself to two cups of coffee per day. Cutting down on your caffeine intake will be beneficial for you but having a cup of coffee in the morning is nothing to feel guilty about and it won’t harm your baby. If you can cut out coffee entirely from your usual routine then it is good to do so but medical studies show that having up to 2 cups of coffee per day is perfectly safe for an expectant mother.
