Answer:
While contracting an illness is often beyond the mother’s control, the choices a mother makes while carrying her child can have permanent impacts on the child’s health and development. Drinking alcohol, using legal or illegal drugs, or smoking cigarettes can all negatively impact a growing fetus.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is the term used to describe the pattern of mental and physical defects caused by a mother's consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. Common characteristics of children with FAS include:
- Small head size and eyes
- Low body weight and short stature
- Thin upper lip
- Droopy eyelids
- Smooth ridge between the nose and upper lip (this ridge is called the philtrum)
- Vision or hearing problems
- Speech and language delays
- Poor memory
- Hyperactive behavior
- Difficulty paying attention
- Learning disabilities
- Intellectual disabilities or low IQ
- Poor reasoning and judgment skills
