Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

As a medical assistant, I am required to have continuing education in order to keep current. Otherwise, I would need to retake an exam that is pretty tough and expensive. I was fresh out of college the first time I took the thing and still had to work hard on getting it done. It has been nearly five years this time. Tonight I attended an education session on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.

The first thing I noticed is the word “spectrum”. It is used in describing certain disorders like Autism’s wide assortment. I like this word when it is relating to light through a prism and the resulting colors. In this case it means “a continuous sequence or range” (Mirrim Webster, 2017). I do not like it so much in this context: Spectrum these days bodes ill.

The second thing I noticed is that I had some wrong ideas about drinking while pregnant. I stopped drinking after I found out I was pregnant, but like many other women, I had been drinking at the beginning of the pregnancy. My ex-husband and I were convinced that to wait to have a child until we could afford to meant to never have a child, and so we were kind of trying to get pregnant. I just never once thought about what it meant, and how soon it would happen. We rocked out and partied on the New Year’s Eve, and then, I found out I was pregnant. Just a few weeks later. So, probably at the sixth week in. Like most women.

The third thing I noticed was that there is a huge discrepancy in what pregnant women and women who are trying to get pregnant are told about drinking during pregnancy. Some physicians say just a drink of wine is safe. Just one drink every now and again. Others say no alcohol is safe. And that was the bottom line of this education event: No alcohol is safe. Not drinking alcohol is the best for the child’s safety.

Resource from the Center for Disease Control, Alcohol and Pregnancy

In the first week of development, the central nervous system is developed, and the head of the child. The face of the child. Week two is arms and legs and eyes. Week six is the development of teeth and the palate. When does a woman usually find out she is pregnant? Usually towards the end of this time frame.

Listen to this. Listen carefully. This was part of our lesson tonight. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FADs) are caused solely by prenatal alcohol exposure and are NOT hereditary.

During this presentation, I learned that Fetal Alcohol Spectrum disorder is caused solely by the mother drinking during pregnancy. There is no other cause. It is totally preventable, but there are pretty high occurrences.

But, we all know about alcohol. It is legal, and it even has certain health benefits! Fetal alcohol spectrum: That is caused by someone who is a drunk, someone who can’t live without their next drink. Not by social drinking, can’t be. Not by an occasional wine cooler! Look at the gals who are poor, or a certain race, or are falling down stinking drunk.  There is no reason to panic. No reason to stop drinking.

Note that this is not saying that FASd is caused only by alcoholic mother drinking while pregnant. Nor does it define the race or social standing of the mother. It is not laying blame. It is giving the source for FADs, a source that is undeniable: The mother drinking alcohol while pregnant.

While some children are clearly FASd, many do not show the physical attributes. Our speaker was saying that a lot of kids are misdiagnosed at Autistic, ADHD, or something similar. These kids have social issues. They don’t have good boundaries and are often taken advantage of by their peers, or they are pranked by their peers. They lack good judgement. They are impulsive. One of the videos the speaker showed was a young man who said he just walked across the road in traffic and got hit. He didn’t think. He has poor judgement and decision making skills. He got hit.

Depression, anxiety, mood disorders, high risk behaviors; these are all symptomatic to children who are born with FASd. They look like other disorders and are often misdiagnosed because there is not link to show that the mother drank while pregnant unless the mother specifies to her doctor that she did drink while pregnant.

“Few estimates for the full range of FASDs are available. Based on community studies using physical examinations, experts estimate that the full range of FASDs in the United States and some Western European countries might number as high as 2 to 5 per 100 school children (or 2% to 5% of the population).” (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum disorders (FASd), 2015)

The fourth thing I noticed is that some of the symptoms and attributes were similar to dementias. I asked if there were studies or information about senior citizens with dementia and FASd. This is just beginning to be looked into. People have drunk while pregnant for centuries and this is just now being looked into. This is important to me because if a patient is misdiagnosed, they then receive the wrong treatment. The wrong treatment can be catastrophic. Deadly.

My daughter is fine. She is smart and talented. She is amazing to me, a gift. Many other mothers are looking at their children and remembering that they had drank during the beginning of their pregnancy, and their kid is fine. So, this must not be a real problem, right?

But some issues don’t turn up right away. Some are only visible later in development. Some are nearly invisible. Behavioral issues can have other causes, right? Children can be misdiagnosed without the whole facts. And once again, FASd is not always visible with facial markers clearly stating this mother drank, and this child has this disorder. Another point to consider is every pregnancy is different. Every child is different. You may have “dodged a bullet” with this one, but the next child may not be so lucky.

It is not a myth. It is real, costly, heartbreaking, and documented.

The fifth and most glaring thing I noticed is this. There is a huge uproar about vaccinations being the cause of autism and other similar issues.

There seems to be no uproar about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum disorder.

Here are a few links with more information regarding FASd:

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/fasd/data.html

http://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/fetal-alcohol-spectrum-disorders.aspx

http://www.nofas.org/recognizing-fasd/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7q5SiO4HBU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHRZjTiFEHs