Alcohol Treatment Help Weblog

In the previous article we started mentioning some of the damages and consequences an alcoholic parent inflicts to his children. Children of alcoholics are an important population who directly suffer both physically and emotionally because of their parent’s drinking.

Let’s start looking at a first series of direct damages:

• Undesired children are born due to alcohol consumption. The presence of the undesired children burden their parents’ life but the consequences on the children are much more severe
• There are many mothers who are drinking during the pregnancy. During the 9 months of pregnancy, the alcoholic mother “is soaking” the unborn child in alcohol, at the concentration a driver is sent to jail. In the literature of specialty, there is no word about the development of the alcoholic dependence of the unborn child through the direct intoxication of the fetus with alcohol which is transferred from the pregnant mother to fetus‘s placenta. In exchange, the physical dependence of the new born that has a drunken mother is proved in many cases by the existence of the syndrome of abstinence to alcohol. Such syndrome is manifested a few hours after the umbilical cord has been cut, when the alcohol that has remained in the baby’s body is exhausted. Its symptoms are: hyperactivity, crying, irritability, sucking activity is compromised, tremor, convulsions, sleeping disturbances or significantly intense perspiration.
• A consequence of this thing is the fact that mother finds out (with an unconscious astonishment) that her little child who has hardly learned to walk, ” pokes and pries” in all the glasses left on the table and toss them off.
  • A psychologist told me about such a case: One of her colleague, who drinks a lot and who is a psychologist too, has told her with amusement that her little daughter who is 2 years old, sucks the drinks left in the glasses found on the table after the guests’ leaving. That little girl will be an alcoholic by no means.
  • Another case: I was talking with an old woman who was hospitalized for alcoholism. She was lucid, intelligent enough and she was correctly and sincerely speaking. I asked her to tell me which is the pregnancy she has mostly drunk in, and then I asked her to consider which of the 5 children is tempted to drink alcohol. It is clearly revealed that the last born child was the victim. In his case, the greatest absorption before his birth and the most severe behavior he has in present coincide to each other.
• Another consequence of alcohol consumption during the pregnancy is the appearance of the fetal alcoholic syndrome or of the fetal alcoholic phenomena at the fetus. We are talking here about a severe handicap consisting in delays in the physical and intellectual development of the child.
• Child’s birth has come. There are social mediums within which it is a habit for the pregnant woman to be anaesthetized or calmed with alcohol. The pregnant woman’s mother or mother in law comes at her head with a bottle of alcoholic drinks and gives her to drink. They have no idea what danger alcohol exposes the fetus to, which is that of the neonatal suffocation, the alimentary difficulties and the wakefulness – sleep disturbances in rhythm as well. The neonatal suffocation might be the cause of a mental handicap for the rest of the child’s life.
• Mother is suckling her child – The alcohol mother was spoiled at the birth and after the birth with, is freely transferred to the maternal milk. The maternal milk contaminated with alcohol has the same type of bad effects on the child’s body: respiration, blood circulation, nutrition, psychomotor and intellectual development and so on.
• The alcoholic mother continues to drink due to the need of alcohol she is feeling. But not only mother is supposed to be an alcoholic person. If father is a great consumer of alcoholic drinks it is enough, as the alcohol is thus accessible to the woman: she can help herself with a “drop” of alcohol or may consume it at the repeated advice of the others. A popular saying says that “suckling is stimulated by beer”.

These are some first consequences of alcohol consumption by parents or by pregnant mothers with severe implications for the children. In the next article we will go on to the emotional problems a children has to carry all his life because his or her parents were alcoholics. Stay tuned. And please drop a note and tell us what you feel and what are your experiences.

Date: Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 5:48 am | Category: General | RSS Feed: RSS 2.0 feed.
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