In Vitro Fertility Goddess

The dos and don'ts depend on what age the person you speak to and they range from Not taking Long Car Trips (from the ‘60's when cars suspensions and roads were not as good as today's) to Not taking Hot Baths, and the latest : Not Drinking More than Two Standard Cups of Coffee a Day.

Excuse me while I try and ascertain what a standard cup of coffee is, I've kind of lost it somewhere amongst the double skinny soy mocchaccinos and the long flat whites. Oh right, it involves 100mg of caffeine per serve - apparently we need to be asking for coffees by the milligram not the mix if we want to reduce our miscarriage risk.

Dr De-Kun Li, a doctor and research scientist at the Kaiser Research Institute California studied 1063 women who self-reported their caffeine intake during their early pregnancies and reported the findings in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology on January 21^st.

Among women who drank no caffeine the miscarriage rate was 12.5%, while amongst those who, via sodas, cocoa, tea and hot chocolate (don't get me started on quantities of these) had 200mg or over (wait, that's two coffees or more - better make mine one and three quarter cups of coffee please), the rate was 25.5%, or double.

According to Dr Li caffeine is difficult for the foetus to metabolize. It can also decrease blood flow to the placenta, constrict arteries and influence cell development. He recommends that no caffeine is consumed for the first three to four months of pregnancy. (Perhaps someone should relay that to all the Hollywood celebrities walking round with their rumoured baby bumps and hummer-sized cups of takeaway coffee and soda. They're hardly setting a good or indeed any kind of example).

So where does that leave those trying to conceive? With a major caffeine withdrawal headache I'd say.

Unless of course you take into account some of the arguments of other researchers who say that as it has been proven that woman who suffer morning sickness are far less likely to miscarry due to stronger pregnancy hormones and that these women are also less likely to drink coffee due to nausea. So the caffeine link may be coincidental and not causal. But nobody can confirm it.

So on that note I'm off to have a lukewarm bath followed by a short drive on a smooth road to get my one and three quarter cups of morning long skinny macchiato on soy.

Jodi Panayotov