Coffee linked to birth of smaller babies

Mothers-to-be who have a couple of mugs of coffee a day risk having an underweight baby, research suggests. Coffee may also make pregnancy last longer - but only by a matter of hours.
The observations come from researchers who studied detailed records of almost 60,000 pregnancies from a ten-year period in Norway. The records included information about how often the women had foods or drinks containing caffeine, from tea and coffee to chocolate sandwich spread and bars of chocolate. Comparing this with details of their baby revealed a clear link with caffeine and birth weight, with 200 to 300mg a day raising the odds of the child being classed as small for the length of the pregnancy by up to 62%.
A mug of instant coffee contains around 100 mg of caffeine, and a mug of filter coffee, around 140 mg of caffeine. However, some drinks sold in high street coffee shops contain as much as 300 mg per cup. In Britain, as in Scandinavia, pregnant women are advised to limit their caffeine intake to 200 mg a day.
Coffee, specifically, was found to be linked with increasing the length of pregnancy, with a daily mug of instant coffee lengthening the time the baby is in the womb by eight hours. Unlike some previous studies, the research did not make a link between caffeine and premature birth.
Researcher Dr. Verena Sengpiel, of the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden, said that caffeine might hurt the growth of the unborn baby by slowing the vital passage of nutrients from mother to baby via the placenta. Writing in the journal BMC Medicine, she added that coffee may make increase the length of pregnancy by a matter of hours by interfering with the chemical signals that occur around the onset of labour.
Dr. Euan Paul, of the British Coffee Association, said: ‘The UK Food Standards Agency carefully analyzed and thoroughly reviewed the effects of caffeine during pregnancy and currently recommends that pregnant women moderate consumption to an upper safe limit of 200 mg/day - two to three cups of coffee. “Switching to decaf during pregnancy is also an option for those who wish to continue drinking coffee. We welcome more research into this important area so that the associations found in this study can be further explored.”
Source: Daily Mail