Pregnant women told not to worry about drinking coffee

Drinking coffee during pregnancy has no effect on the birthweight of babies, despite warnings to the contrary, scientists have said.

Researchers from Denmark also concluded that the length of pregnancy is not affected by the amount of caffeine consumed.

Some experts have previously advised women seeking to have a baby to limit the amount of coffee in their diet once pregnant, but a study published today on the online version of the British Medical Journal has refuted such claims.

“Decreasing caffeine intake during the later stages of pregnancy has no overall effect on birthweight and length of pregnancy,” Dr Bodil Hammer Bech, of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and his colleagues concluded.

The scientists monitored the pregnancies of 1,207 healthy women as part of the study, all of whom drank in excess of one cup of coffee a day. They were all more than 20 weeks into their pregnancies.

These women were split into two groups and were given either decaffeinated or caffeinated coffee, but did not know which.

Researchers monitored their coffee intake and also took note of the caffeine they consumed through other means, including by drinking cola or tea.

Other potentially crucial factors – such as whether those taking part in the study smoked, their age and their pre-pregnancy weight – were also taken into account.

When the scientists examined the results of the study they found that those women drinking decaffeinated coffee had babies with a mean birthweight 3519g, 20g less than the weight of babies with mothers who drank caffeinated coffee.

The scientists concluded this difference was too small to be of any statistical significance.

Suggestions that caffeine intake affected the gestation period were also dismissed.

Of those mothers who were given caffeinated coffee, 4.2 per cent of the babies were born prematurely and 4.5 per cent were considered small for their gestational age.

This compared to there being 5.2 per cent premature births and 4.7 per cent underweight babies in the group of women who drank decaffeinated coffee.