'I didn't stop my pregnant friend from drinking - now she's mad at me'

There have been numerous studies over the years that say drinking alcohol while pregnant or breastfeeding is never a good idea for a mum or baby. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends abstaining from booze in the lead-up to conception and while carrying a baby as it can cause a number of issues including miscarriage, premature birth, the baby having a low birth weight, and cause them to develop a serious life-long condition called foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

While most pregnant people choose to give up alcohol completely while pregnant, some expectant parents will have the occasional small glass of something with a meal or celebration. However, most people would agree the idea of seeing someone who was pregnant downing shots or bottles of wine is wholly irresponsible and dangerous.

While everyone is free to make their own decisions, when do you as a friend step in to stop a person from making potentially disastrous life choices? This is the predicament one woman has found herself in after her pregnant buddy decided to drink alcohol on her birthday, only to regret it hugely the next day - and then blame her pals.

Taking to Reddit, she wrote: “A friend of mine, Sam, is four months pregnant with her second child and was celebrating her 33rd birthday. We all went to a nice restaurant to celebrate. She orders a bottle of red wine for the table, and she starts drinking.

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“When the waiter is pouring her glass she basically has it up to 3/4 of the glass. We are looking at Sam like come on that’s a lot, and then one of her friends says ‘Sam you aren’t going to drink all of that right?’ Sam replied telling everyone to relax and that you can have one or two glasses, red wine is filled with antioxidants.”

The woman added at this point she had been told by her gynecologist that you should have zero alcohol while pregnant, but thought one glass of wine couldn’t be too bad. After dinner, they all headed to a cocktail bar where it was known they served great non-alcoholic drinks and mocktails.

She went on: “Sam looks at the menu then orders a Long Island iced tea. Me and another one of her friends tell ‘come on it’s not good for the baby’. She then snaps at us telling us that there are enough men trying to control women’s bodies that she doesn’t need us telling her what to do. After that, it got really quiet, and we all backed off. Sam ended up drinking a couple more drinks after that, she ordered birthday shots and then got a frozen slurpie-type drink.”

After getting quite drunk, they got her an Uber and sent her home but the next day she posted some photos of the party on social media, and in them, she appeared inebriated. The woman added: “A lot of our mutual friends are saying that we are all guilty for not stopping Sam. Most of the blame is on her, but people have been saying that we are bad friends for letting her hurt the baby like that. I don’t know what to do.

"Sam is a good friend of mine but she is a grown woman, am I supposed to tell her what she can and can’t do when she is pregnant? What has made the situation bad is that Sam now told people we were encouraging her to do birthday shots etc., when we were all cringing when she was drinking. At this point, Sam’s family all see us as bad friends.”

The shocking post quickly gathered attention online, racking up more than 1,000 comments from outraged users. One person wrote: “You’re not the a***hole here but personally, I’d be cool with burning a friendship down to the ground over this. Getting drunk is for adults. Not for fetuses building neural pathways.”

Another reader agreed, adding: “Yes, I would have left at the mention of going to a cocktail bar. Fetal alcohol syndrome is no joke. What this friend is doing is playing with fire. I wonder if she may have an alcohol addiction. Either way, who needs a friend like that?”

And someone else penned: “You’re not in the wrong, she’s a grown woman and this isn’t her first rodeo when it comes to pregnancy. If she doesn’t have it in her to care then nothing you said or did was going to change that.”

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