My own mother was a baby-boomer, the original “Me” generation. A complicated personality mixture of “I am woman hear me roar” and narcissism topped off with overwhelming fear of being alone or going anywhere she didn’t know. While I don’t remember ever seeing her toke up, the accounts of her cannabis pregnancy were never a secret. Neither was the fact that I was that horrible child who had invaded her womb. At birth my close set eyes and pointed ears made me look like a demon child; Satan’s baby in the flesh, as my mother said about the first time she saw me. She even bitched that my arrival was ill timed. She was having her day, a baby shower, when ahead of schedule I decided to change her plans.

Having children has always meant changing your plans. In my case (and I suspect that in this regard, I am not an isolated incident), my mother’s cannabis pregnancy began at conception. According to those who knew her, my mom got pregnant after getting high with my father. I’ll never know if she had any long-term intentions that fateful night when she set her eyes on my hulking dad, but they did marry before I was born. I remember my mom walking down the street wearing an 80s tube top with her ass hanging out of her shorts while carrying a case of beer on her hip and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She was crude in her speech and vulgar in her dress, which only added to my problems at school. I had learning disabilities and her appearance did nothing to improve the attitudes of my teachers towards me. My school record was set as problematic and by the time she adopted the ways of a prude after my father’s untimely death, I was being shunted around to social workers and doctors who tried everything to quell my willful spirit.

I can’t say that it all was because of her cannabis pregnancy. The one thing that scientists agree on is that in light of the illicit nature of cannabis use in past studies, was the unreliability of self reporting a cannabis pregnancy. We know the affects of alcohol consumption and cigarettes on the unborn as these substances have long been legally available. Is it really too much to choose the side of caution when it comes to a cannabis pregnancy? Least we forget that cigarettes once had their day, promoted as calming and safe by Doctors. Along with the push to legalize cannabis, has been a cultural white washing of this drug, as calm inducing, the peaceful drug, the happy pill, etc, when if anything it is the I’m too stoned to care intoxicant. Maybe it’s an attitude that pot smoking parents bring to parenting, maybe it’s the drug itself that causes irreparable harm, maybe it’s a combination of factors. We may never know, but shouldn’t your child be given every advantage from the beginning? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that your parents cared enough about your arrival to forgo some ‘party-time’ or ‘me-time” to assure your well being?

In a culture that has adopted Cannabis as a safe, and harmless drug, the potential problems should be addressed. With the widespread availability of edibles and lotions and other means to increase THC consumption we should soon be able to get reliable data. In an environment which does not judge the mother for its use, we may soon have a measure with more exacting accuracy the true prevalence and effects of THC consumption on fetal development…too bad it will be too late for those it affects.

So if you are having a baby or around someone who is, do what you can to prevent a cannabis pregnancy, because until the data is calculated, I am living proof that the effects can be disastrous.

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