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women with wine-related careers...

magnolia
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magnolia

magnolia

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Hi Jancis,

I'm a fellow wine writer (female), I've been studying/writing about wine for a couple of years so I'm a relative newcomer. But I love it and plan to make a serious 'go' to develop my expertise and a niche.

However I'm also of an age where I have to make some critical decisions about when to start a family - sooner than later - which would of course mean scaling back for a year or more any sipping, spitting and swallowing. I'm American so perhaps a bit too alarmist about alcohol consumption during pregnancy & breastfeeding but my feeling is, why take chances? At the same time I don't want to lose momentum in my career, so it's a real dilemma. Frankly I'm afraid that if I stop drinking, I'll fall way behind because tasting, tasting, tasting is really the only way I will learn. Even if I stick to sipping, some always slips down the throat...and I sometimes sip a lot more in a day than the average person drinks in a week.

If it's not too personal a question, how did you handle this? Any/all advice, suggestions, etc. would be most welcome. Thanks for your insight !

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Jancis Robinson

Jancis Robinson

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I'd be the last person positively to encourage anyone to drink during pregnancy but I really do think the chances of causing fetal damage from the effects of wine tasting, as opposed to wine drinking, are practically nil. Remember that a lot of the scariest research was conducted on women who were so addicted they were practically in an alcoholic coma when they gave birth.

I'm afraid I just more or less followed what my body was telling me, drinking much less but not being neurotic about it. I took my MW exam when five months pregnant with our son who is now 6'3" and was offered a place at Oxford this year. I don't remember doing things very differently when expecting our 12 year-old either. I think it's society's attitudes that have changed most since then rather than the actual risks.

But please don't come back and sue me if you don't have such happy experiences!

Best of luck.

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