Is alcohol safe while trying to conceive?

What does the evidence say about alcohol while trying to conceive?

1. Avoiding all alcohol in pregnancy is the recommendation, and no safe amount has been identified. 1
2. Whether alcohol makes it harder to get pregnant is not known, though some research raises concern about heavy drinking and fertility. 1
3. In a Danish cohort of 6,120 people trying to conceive, consumption of fewer than 14 servings a week showed no discernible effect on fertility, with fecundability ratios of 0.97 to 1.01 across the 1 to 13 servings a week categories. 2
4. A dose-response meta-analysis of 19 studies covering 98,657 women found a modestly lower chance of conceiving per cycle among drinkers versus non-drinkers, with a pooled estimate of 0.87 overall and 0.77 for intake above 12.5 grams of ethanol a day. 3
5. Stopping alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and non-medical use of prescription drugs is part of standard prepregnancy advice, and a male partner is advised to stop harmful substances before you try, since smoking, alcohol, and drug use can damage sperm cells. 4

What to know about alcohol while trying to conceive

• This is where the gap between conception and knowing about it does the damage. MotherToBaby recommends avoiding all alcohol in pregnancy, and there is no identified safe amount. The reassuring part, if you already drank before a positive test: a single serving one time is described as much less concerning than heavy or binge drinking.
• The advice does not soften. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder risk tracks with how much and how often alcohol is consumed, along with other factors such as genetics and nutrition, and daily or binge drinking carries the highest risk. Non-alcoholic options are worth checking, since some still contain trace alcohol.
• Same answer. If cutting back has been difficult at any point in this process, that is a medical conversation rather than a willpower one, and ACOG frames the prepregnancy visit as exactly the place to raise it and get support.