Lack of maternal instinct or severe alcoholism? Polish police announced on Friday that a baby came into the world under the influence of alcohol as his mother was drunk while giving birth!

Doctors took the decision of checking his blood-alcohol level when they saw the mother's condition. What they saw left them speechless. Tests made 12 hours after the boy's birth uncovered a level of 1.2 grammes of alcohol per 1,000 grammes of blood. Translated to an adult drinker, this would mean a bottle of wine or two liters of beer.

To understand the alcohol level in the baby's blood, just learn that blood-alcohol limit for drivers in Poland is 0.2 grammes, six times less than that found in the children's blood. The boy had five pounds, seven ounces (2.45 kg) at birth and was drunk before he was even born.

The baby entered in intensive care on Friday, and even if his condition was stable, he could have remained with long lasting brain damage. The 34-year-old mother fled the hospital in Zabrze (in south Poland) after the birth on Tuesday but she was arrested next day, when tests found no traces of alcohol in her blood.

"The woman is already the mother of five children. Their grandparents have custody because she has (already) been deprived of her parental rights," said police spokesperson Marek Wypych.

Studies have revealed not only that the brains of alcoholic individuals are smaller than those of non-alcoholic ones, due to their heavy alcohol intake, but also that their children have smaller brains.

Parents' alcoholism renders their children more prone to alcoholism than the children of non-alcoholic individuals. Besides the adverse genetics, the first children experience harmful biological and psychological factors like poor diets (from the mother's womb and after, since alcoholic parents usually disregard food), unstable parental relationships, and alcohol exposure before birth.