Pregnant spectator

SksA1

SksA1

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A friend of mine wants to come watch an IPSC match and she is 8 months pregnant...whats the general concensus on this? Is it harmfull to baby or mom? Lead isnt a concern but what about noise?

And please hold off color comments, im looking for a serious answer.
 
Can she not wait? Is it that important?

My largest concern would be ricochets. I have been lightly hit with a few over the years of comp shooting and heard thousands..

Probably fine. Probably.
 
I would say IF she stays at a safe distance where she has no need for hearing protection then maybe.
Keep in mind how well sound travels through water. Mom may have hearing protection but the unborn is encased in water. No protection from the noise. Tiny developing eras may become damaged. I think that would be reason enough to stay very far away from the action. If she feels she needs/wants to attend, it would have to be well back from the firing line. Low frequency sound ways travel farther than high frequency. High frequency sound travels faster but go less distance. Either one could cause damage to young ears. Best would be to talk to her OBGYN about the expected high db noise.
 
Results of these studies suggest that: (1) exposure to excessive noise during pregnancy may result in high-frequency hearing loss in newborns, and may be associated with prematurity and intrauterine growth retardation, (2) exposure to noise in the NICU may result in cochlear damage, and (3) exposure to noise and other environmental factors in the NICU may disrupt the normal growth and development of premature infants. On the basis of these study results, noise-induced health effects on fetuses and newborns merit further study as clinical and public health concerns.

Why risk it?
 
My wife was a frequent spectator when I was competing. She stopped coming when she was pregnant, especially in the latter part of her pregnancy because our kids kicked so hard when she was close to the shooting line. They decided it wasn't a good idea. All of my kids are shooters so it didn't affect them that way but they sure didn't like it while in the womb.
 
Any study, like statistics, can prove anything you want it to prove. The only way to prove or disprove noise of any kind being harmful to the unborn is to put a decibel meters in her.
Mom is exposed to as much if not more noise just crossing a busy street. The unborn aren't encased in just water either. Layers of mom and her baby protecting fat.
 
Until we had definitive proof that thalidomide was harmful, it was still prescribed to pregnant women. Who wants their baby to be the one of those that definitively proves that unborns at a shooting range are a bad idea?

Err on the side of caution. Never do anything that have to ask others, "Is this bad for my baby?" Chances are that the answers you get are not going to be from informed professionals if you go to the Internet.

I would argue that amount of sound is not as important as sound intensity. There's a reason we all wear hearing protection at the range, and not while crossing a busy street.
 
We were leaning towards her not attending anyway but it peaked my interest in knowing what everyone thought on the idea.

This one is a no brainer, she stays home.
 
SksA1 said:
I can respect that...reason?
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your kid? or just a freinds kid. and when that kid turns south and the mom thinks back and blames you for all the years of grief you caused by taking her to the range and has a nervous breakdown goes nuts and gets access to some firearms and ... well you see where this is going...
if its your kid then you have to deal with it everyday! for the rest of your life, day in day out .. your call.. :)
 
airtruck63chev said:
your kid? or just a freinds kid. and when that kid turns south and the mom thinks back and blames you for all the years of grief you caused by taking her to the range and has a nervous breakdown goes nuts and gets access to some firearms and ... well you see where this is going...
if its your kid then you have to deal with it everyday! for the rest of your life, day in day out .. your call.. :)
Click to expand...


Well put
 
At 8 months, baby's hearing is well developed. Given that water is quite a good sound conductor, the sound of shots will definitely reach the kid.
It is hard to say if it will cause any hearing damage, but it would be unadvised. (Source: My wife's ob/gyn).
Think about it this way, you certainly wear hearing protection, so what hearing protection does the unborn have?
 
Beermaker said:
I would say IF she stays at a safe distance where she has no need for hearing protection then maybe.
Keep in mind how well sound travels through water. Mom may have hearing protection but the unborn is encased in water. No protection from the noise. Tiny developing eras may become damaged. I think that would be reason enough to stay very far away from the action. If she feels she needs/wants to attend, it would have to be well back from the firing line. Low frequency sound ways travel farther than high frequency. High frequency sound travels faster but go less distance. Either one could cause damage to young ears. Best would be to talk to her OBGYN about the expected high db noise.
Click to expand...

This is why my wife stopped shooting and watching me compete during pregnancy.
 
I've seen women competing at 8months pregnant in IPSC, also talked to ones that won't let reloading or cleaning happen in the house until the kid is in the teens due to lead contamination and the wonderful chemicals used in cleaning. The women I've seen shooting who were pregnant had normal enough babies as far as I've been able to tell, but I suppose they could have 3rd eyes or be deaf, I wouldn't really know as I don't know the families well enough. But I've not heard of any issues.
Regarding the sound thing, I had one tell me that her doctor told her the baby would be fine so long as it wasn't continuous machine gun fire and so long as she wore thick clothing.
 
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