Fetal Alcohol Syndrome & Characteristics of Mothers Who Have Kids With FAS

Did you know that alcohol is the leading known preventable cause of mental and physical birth defects within the United States?  For women who decide to drink alcohol during pregnancy, they take that extreme risk of giving birth to a child who will ultimately have to pay a HUGE price.  That child will have to suffer from mental and physical deficiencies for his/her entire life!

Being a child born to a mother with alcohol addiction, I find this topic regarding FAS to be of extreme importance because it is something that is so easily preventable, and yet for some women who have alcohol addiction, the urge to drink heavily during pregnancy is not so easily overcome.  This is a major issue for that of the unborn child who is going to have to live with the consequences of that alcohol addiction for the rest of their lives.  It's estimated that each year in the United States alone, that 1 in every 750 infants is born a pattern of physical, functional, and developmental problems...referred to as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), while another 40, 000 are born with Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE).

So what happens if a woman knows that drinking while pregnant is dangerous?  What are some characteristics that would still drive someone to abuse alcohol in a heavy way?  Well after reading a study of some methods by the  Aberdeen Area Indian Health Service (IHS) and the national IHS Institutional Review Boards: Maternal alcohol abuse was defined when one or more of the following patterns of drinking were recorded in the maternal medical record: (1) heavy, which included terms "heavy," "intoxicated," "alcohol abuse," "drunk," and "alcoholism;" (2) binge drinking of five or more drinks per occasion or blood alcohol levels higher than 200 mg/dL; or (3) daily alcohol use. 

Many of the mothers within this case study had been reviewed through their medical records and concluding this study showed that these women were often victims of sexual abuse, depression, suicide attempts, cirrhosis, and maternal cognitive function.  Ultimately this is defined in the study as cognitive problems that differed from those caused by adult alcohol abuse but that are typical of adults who are affected by fetal alcohol exposurethemselves (poor judgment, poor memory, slow learning, and lack of abstract thinking skills).

FAS is a serious diagnosis among babies within the United States and in order to fully understand why the most common cause of preventable mental retardation in the United States is still an ongoing issue, it is important to delve into the characteristics of those mothers of children with FAS in order to address the needs that are going to prevent future prenatal alcohol exposure.

Characteristics of Mothers Who Have Children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Some Characteristics of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome