A new study came out today that makes the claim that pregnant women who drink caffeine, even just one cup of joe a day, are at a higher risk in giving birth to a low birth rate baby. Now, I know every woman is different, but I drank coffee every day while pregnant (with the blessing of my OBGYN, of course) and my daughter was born at 10 ½ pounds. So my personal results were that drinking coffee didn’t do squat in percolating a lighter baby.
A more scientific study than my own anecdotal one, was done by the British Medical Journal where they found that women who drank one or two cups of coffee had a 20% risk of having a low birth weight baby and woman who had two or three cups had a 50% risk. But it’s not just java, they stated that “any source of caffeine, including that from tea, cola, chocolate and some prescription drugs, to relatively slower fetal growth.”
This follows a study in the U.S. in January that linked miscarriages to larger doses of caffeine (two or cups of coffee a day). To read more about this recent study, click here. And if you’re knocked up you may consider putting down that latte, mocha or cup of Sumatra, you’ll be drinking plenty of coffee once you are a sleep deprived new parent.
