Yeah, milk is definitely not necessary for anyone to drink. If you're worried about calcium Google "foods high in calcium" and you'll see many other options. As the ladies said above, soda isn't necessarily going to cause birth defects, but high sugar intake is not nourishing for mom or baby. I looked it up once and 4gms of sugar is about 1 tsp so one can of Mountain Dew, with 46gms of sug has ELEVEN teaspoons of sugar in it. One can! It's crazy!