Baby Making

What effects will alcohol have on my baby?  How should I quit drinking when pregnant? For some women discovering that they are pregnant will be enough motivation for them to stop drinking or cut it down to the occasional drink. For others though this will be more difficult especially where you ‘don't feel any difference' or your social life revolves around drinking. It may be that you need to apply some structure to dealing with the problem.

Getting Started

The best time to start is before you get pregnant but it may be more difficult to motivate yourself when the pregnancy is still a possibility. For others the pregnancy may occur in a less planned way and you may be a few weeks into the pregnancy before you decide to take this step. Some women are fortunate as pregnancy itself leaves them turned off by the smell or taste of alcohol.

Quantity of Drink

How much am I drinking during pregnancy? Take a look back over the last couple of weeks and see how many units of alcohol you are drinking per week. Don't just guess, as most people under estimate their intake, in particular, calling any size of glass of alcohol one unit.

Set Your Goal

What do I want to achieve? It is important to establish what you want to achieve. There is some evidence that any amount of alcohol has an effect on the developing fetus, so stopping altogether would be the ideal. However, many women are looking at reducing their alcohol intake rather than complete abstinence. Decide on a specific goal about how much alcohol you will reduce during your pregnancy?

Keep A Diary

It is important to monitor your progress and your setbacks so keeping a diary can prove enormously informative during your pregnancy period. The way you record the information and what you record are up to you. It is useful to record for each drink where you were (just got home from work), the reason for drinking or how you felt (felt stressed/always have one when I get in) and whether you might have done anything else (got straight into the bath).

Alternative Reward

Set up a system of alternative rewards during pregnancy. The main reason that pregnant women drink is that they find it pleasurable, so they need to replace this with some alternative reward. Deciding on what they find rewarding is a personal. They might need to substitute a few drinks with a nice meal, or they may save the money and buy some jewelry or go for a massage.

Activities Incompatible with Drinking

Pubs tend to be filled with people drinking and smoking and this is the worst place to be if you want to stop drinking. Try to expand or change your social activities to avoid such situations as much as possible especially during the pregnancy period.

Change Your Routine

Often one's alcohol intake is purely through habit. If you always go to the pub on a Sunday or have a drink when you get in from work, then try to arrange alternative activities,  make a phone call, listen to some music or start a relaxation program.

Try To Get Your Partner to Give Up Too

This can be enormously helpful in terms of increasing your motivation and in changing your lifestyle/ social life in your pregnancy period.

Review Your Progress

Keeping a diary can be amazingly informative. It should help you to identify some of the problems and hopefully clues to the solutions areas. What are the ‘triggers' to your drinking, for example situations, events or emotions that lead you to drink? What were the alternatives? You may find that certain situations or feelings lead you to drink and if you are finding it difficult to make progress then it may be that some of these factors need further exploration.

Getting More Help

If you don't make any progress with stopping to drink within a couple of weeks of getting pregnant, then it may be time to seek further help. In pregnancy there is no time to waste, as every day is important to the development of the baby. Problem drinking is merely a symptom of other more complicated issues.