A pregnant woman was refused a drink at a pub and then asked to leave by staff who said they were protecting her unborn child.
Caroline Williams, 26, who is five months pregnant, says she felt humiliated by the treatment.
She insists she is a responsible mother and would never endanger her baby even though she drank a pint of beer and was going to have another half.
She said: ‘I was on a rare night out with some friends. I had a pint of lager and a friend offered to get me another half – that was going to be my limit.
‘He was refused service because it was for me and when I later took a sip from another friend’s glass the assistant manageress asked me and my friends to leave.’
Even though I agree with this manager, a spokesman for the Mitchells and Butler chain which owns the pub, apologized and said an investigation had been launched.
He said: ‘We would like to apologise unreservedly to all of the guests involved for any offence that may have been caused. While the team member may have believed she was acting with her own good intentions, she did not handle the situation in an appropriate manner.’
Advice from the Chief Medical Officer says that women trying to conceive or who are pregnant should avoid drinking alcohol.
Excess alcohol consumption can be the cause of a condition known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome which causes mental retardation and birth defects. But other experts say an occasional glass of wine will not harm a child.
Some people just don’t get it…
Hurray for the manager, I can’t even fathom being that selfish — the woman SHOULD feel humiliated! By the way, there is an award for you on my blog.
IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO DRINK WHILE PREGNANT!!!
I dedicate my life to helping my adopted daughter’s struggle with fetal alcohol syndrome. She struggles every day and life is not easy for her or the rest of us in the family as we watch how her memory evaporates all info received after a few minutes . Social skills will be forever hard for her to understand, so I implement physical exercises and games to help her make sense of her world.
Please check this out so as to help your child:
http://parentingaspecialneedschild.com/blog/
I think that what the manager did was fantastic. If only there were more people like this in this country. I believe that we should have a law criminalizing women who drink when they are pregnant because of the harmful effects that alcohol can have on a developing fetus. If a mother has a raised blood alcohol content for just 45 minutes, 20 million brain cells in her baby’s brain would be deleted. We have a responsibility to protect unborn babies from contracting this horrible disease, so this is really the only possible way.