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If your favourite motto is “But first, coffee,” you’ll need to change
your morning routine up a bit during pregnancy. The data linking
caffeine to a healthy pregnancy is confusing and inconclusive.
Pregnant women don’t want their babies to become guinea pigs
for experiments involving caffeine dangers so there’s no human
data showing how detrimental, or not, your daily cuppa can be.
The studies that have been done were performed on animals
and showed decreased fertility, increased risk of miscarriage and
birth defects, so while we’re not exactly sure what that means for
humans, we do know that caffeine crosses the placenta and can
affect your baby.
Since we don’t really know how much caffeine is too much during
pregnancy, it’s best to remain cautious. The recommended
amount of caffeine is less than 200mg a day, which is about
the size of a small cup of coffee. While coffee and soft drinks
are obvious forms of caffeine, be mindful of other things that
may contain caffeine such as coffee ice cream, chocolate
milkshake, energy drinks, hot cocoa, tea and even some over the
counter medications.
Caffeine can also prevent you from getting proper sleep and makes
you pee a lot more; two things you definitely don’t need to deal with
during pregnancy. The good news is that pregnancy has a funny
I’m having major caffeine
withdrawal. Can’t I just have one
tall latte in the morning?
way of self-regulating you. Thanks to my awful morning sickness
during my first trimester, even the thought of a cup of coffee made
me gag and I’m a full on coffee addict usually. Since the hardest
part is the wretched withdrawal headache that continues for
about a week after giving it up, it was easy for me to go caffeine-
free the rest of my pregnancy. My morning cuppa instead was hot
water with lemon, which also helped quell the nausea.
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