Pregancy advice from five countries in 1999

When Andrea was pregnant with our first child Miles in 1999, she lived in Poitiers, France, I lived in Basel, Switzerland, and she spent the last few months before his birth in Kassel, Germany. So we got pregnancy advice from those three countries – and from the United Kingdom and the United States (from books friends gave us). There were contradictions. For example, the advice from America and Germany said one should avoid alcohol entirely while pregnant, and the advice from Switzerland, the UK, and France allowed moderate consumption. But in Switzerland and the UK, "moderate" meant a glass of wine a week – and in France, a glass of wine with lunch.  (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 February 2022)