A Mother’s Day Message

MOUNDSVILLE – A woman’s alcohol use during her pregnancy is one of the top preventable forms of birth defects. Drinking alcohol in pregnancy raises the risk for miscarriage and premature birth, mental retardation, learning disabilities, emotional problems and organ defects.

In Marshall County, the percentage of pregnant women who report alcohol use during pregnancy is 85% higher than the state average, according to state and national data. The Marshall County Anti-Drug Coalition wants to lower that statistic.

As many as 40,000 children in the United States are born every year with birth defects that are tied to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs), which are caused when their mothers use alcohol during pregnancy. All of those birth defects could be avoided if their mothers hadn’t used alcohol. But it’s estimated that 1 in 12 pregnant women drink while pregnant; 1 in 30 pregnant women report having five or more drinks on a single occasion, also known as binge drinking.

Not only should pregnant women avoid alcohol but a woman who is thinking about having a baby shouldn’t drink and women of childbearing age who could become pregnant should talk to their doctors about how to lower the risk of alcohol exposure. The Surgeon General said that almost half of all U.S. births are unplanned and a woman can be pregnant for several weeks and not know it. Alcohol use during this time could be damaging to a fetus in the early stage of development.

A fetus can’t process alcohol in the same way as an adult, so the alcohol level can be higher in a fetus than in the woman who drank and it can stay that way longer.

The Marshall County Anti-Drug Coalition wants to remind everyone that there’s no safe level of alcohol use in pregnancy. The Marshall County Anti-Drug Coalition’s mission is to keep Marshall County substance abuse free. The Marshall County Anti-Drug Coalition also meets every first Friday of the month at noon at the Marshall County Family Resource Network, 324 7th St., Moundsville. The meetings are open to the public.

The Marshall County Anti-Drug Coalition is funded in part by a federal SPF-SIG grant from the West Virginia Governor’s Office and the West Virginia Partnership to Promote Community. The grant is made possible by the State of West Virginia’s receipt of a federal Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant (SPF-SIG) from the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. The grant is administered through the Marshall County Family Resource Network.