The newest baby-scare is that excessive caffeine intake may cause miscarriages. It was a small study, the purported risk wasn't large, and correlation isn't causation. I'm sure there is a strong correlation between coffee intake and stress induced illness but that has more to do with career and lifestyle choices than coffee. Stress induces a bad diet, a bad diet induces poor health, and poor health induces miscarriages.

Tradition plays an odd role in magnifying this scary news story because traditionally you don't talk about early miscarriages. The traditional rule is that women don't announce they are pregnant until at least the first month and preferably two. The reason is that miscarriages are quite common -- in the study 20% of the women miscarried. Babycenter.com has a good rule-of-thumb "Here's how I do it: who would you want to tell if you had a miscarriage?" .. those are the only people you want to tell that you are pregnant. Adding insult to injury women who have a miscarriage once are likely to have it again and as a final insult bearing children has absolutely no relationship to being a good mother.

Thankfully humanity is more resilient than the news implies. Millions of babies were born even before the advent of cooked food. Most everyone alive was born in an age when mothers drank and/or smoked* in public and no one thought twice about it. This New Years I attended a very age-appropriate party where the wives** talked about at what age to feed the kids eggs or peanuts to avoid allergies (the general agreement was 1+, with some mocking of literature of 4+, and some mixed support of "you worry too much"). It can't be overstated that we live in a wonderful age where wheat gluten is a bigger enemy than club foot.

The "caffeine bad" news should be way down on your list; or as one as a friend-o-mine said while shopping for a house: "The pool is too expensive. We'd have to have a third kid just to make sure two survived." That is far more realistic risk assessment than worrying about coffee.

* depending on who you ask my mother did or didn't indulge while pregnant. If you want an extra "there are no lessons to be learned here" my father has worked in nuclear power plant all his life. Four boys, go figure.

** The guys talked about guns, fireworks, and golf. And then we played XBox. That and I guarantee we were drinking better booze than you if not as much.