While certain foods and drinks are unequivocally off-limits during pregnancy, caffeine is one substance whose limits are not always well-defined. While your doctor's advice is invaluable when it comes to deciding how much caffeine is safe, it's wise to educate yourself on the effects of caffeine so you can weigh the risks properly.
How Caffeine Affects a Baby
Because caffeine crosses the placenta, your baby gets a dose of it every time you do. As a stimulant, caffeine can interrupt your baby's sleep and movement patterns, reports the American Pregnancy Association. Unlike an adult, a fetus cannot metabolize caffeine, so it has a direct effect on the baby's tissues, cells and membranes. Caffeine also affects a fetus indirectly: It causes a mother's blood vessels to contract, which might reduce blood flow to the placenta and baby, according to BabyCenter.
Risks of Too Much Caffeine
Although the risks of drinking caffeine during pregnancy have not been definitively established, miscarriage might be one of the biggest dangers. A 2008 study conducted by Dr. De-Kun Li, reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente Northern California's Division of Research, found that pregnant women who consumed more than 200 mg of caffeine per day had twice the risk of miscarriage than women who didn't consume caffeine. It also has been suggested that high caffeine intake might be linked to stillbirths, low birth weight and undescended testes in male babies, but no studies have demonstrated conclusive evidence of these effects.
Caffeine Intake
The March of Dimes recommends that pregnant women limit their caffeine intake to 200 mg or less per day; that's roughly the amount found in a 12 oz. cup of coffee or five 12 oz. cans of soda. Dr. Li, who headed the study that found a link between miscarriage and high caffeine intake, suggests that pregnant women ideally should cut out caffeine entirely, at least for the first three or four months of pregnancy, when a fetus is in the earliest stages of development.
Caffeine Sources
For most women, coffee is their main source of caffeine, but pregnant women need to consider all of the beverages, foods and even medicines they consume to get a realistic idea of caffeine consumption. Caffeine is found in varying amounts in coffee drinks, soda, chocolate, green tea, black tea, iced tea, hot cocoa, energy drinks, chocolate ice cream, coffee ice cream and chocolate syrup, as well as certain medications for pain relief, migraines and colds. You don't necessarily have to ban all of these things from your diet during pregnancy, but be mindful of your total caffeine intake when consuming them.
