Significant numbers of mothers-to-be are not only consuming alcohol but also binge drinking, according to research published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Share on Pinterest The CDC report reveals 10% of pregnant women in the US admit to drinking alcohol, and 30% of these women binge drink.

Published in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the figures are based on a nationwide survey carried out using the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), for which data collected via landline and cellphone surveys.

The results show that 10% of pregnant women in the US ages 18-44 have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days.

In addition, 3.1% of pregnant women report binge drinking. For women, binge drinking is defined as four or more alcoholic beverages within about 2 hours.

This means that about 30% of women who consume alcohol during pregnancy engage in binge drinking.

By comparison, among non-pregnant women in the same age group, 53.6% reported drinking alcohol and 18.2% reported binge drinking.

Moreover, the likelihood of pregnant women to be binge drinking was higher than that of non-pregnant women. While pregnant binge drinkers reported an average of 4.6 episodes in 30 days, non-pregnant binge drinkers reported only 3.1.

This could be because women who binge drink during pregnancy are more likely to be alcohol-dependent than the average female binge drinker, and therefore binge drink more frequently.

Among pregnant women, those most likely to be drinking are those ages 35-44 years (18.6%), college graduates (13%) and unmarried women (12.9%).