A woman drinking alcohol while she is pregnant causes fetal alcohol syndrome symptoms. They are not always the same and some are more severe than others are. The symptoms are completely preventable by the mother not drinking while she is pregnant or while she may become pregnant. Rather or not the problems are severe, they are still problems that will likely affect the child his or her whole life. The child’s trouble may be physical, mental, emotional, and a lot of times all three.
The physical fetal alcohol syndrome symptoms may include a very skinny upper lip and other disfigurements between the upper lip and the nose. The nose may be short and turned upward. The victim could also have small eyes. There is the potential for the head and brain to be small. Finger, limbs, and joints’ deformities are also signs, as are missing fingers and toes. Deformities in the skeleton may show up as a curved spine, or the whole body being bent. The ribs could be deformed. Even before birth, the doctor may notice the baby is not growing very fast. That can become even more noticeable as the child starts to age without growing well. There is also trouble with coordination. Physical signs you do not see include heart defects, hearing, and vision problems.
Fetal alcohol syndrome symptoms also manifest mentally and emotionally. Trouble sleeping is one of the milder symptoms. Severe mental retardation is one of the more harsh ones. Various learning disorders are also associated with drinking during pregnancy. Sometimes a kid might act really weird and have trouble paying attention. The mothers’ alcoholic beverages may cause attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The workings of the brain are almost always negatively affected in some way but there is generally varying levels of brain damage regardless.
Miscarriages and stillborns are also fetal alcohol syndrome symptoms. The dead baby will likely show signs of not developing correctly and the doctor may determine FAS was the cause of death. There are so many cruel things associated with this illness it could show up as almost anything. The problems are almost limitless. The Queen University promotes the use of a test that involves eye-movements to help in identifying children who have the FAS in some degree. Currently it is hard to say for sure when the symptoms are caused by alcohol or something else. If the mother drank, it is likely it will be diagnosed as FAS.
Even dating back to the Bible there are warnings about not drinking alcohol during pregnancy. In 1973, David Weyhe Smith and Drs. Kenneth Lyons Jones recognized the syndrome and all of the Fetal alcohol syndrome symptoms. They first noticed and documented the physical problems and how often they occurred in the children of women who drank during pregnancy. They also believed the damage occurred before the children were born. At first, not everybody believed their theory, which has now become a well-known fact. There were many other test and some animals tests that lead doctors to recognize all the defects and their cause.
Drinking while pregnant is not recommended under any circumstances. The risk of hurting your unborn baby is extremely high. Seek help if you cannot abstain for the full term, as you might not be directly hurting yourself but you could possibly hurt or disable your child for the rest of his or her life.