Pregnancy & Anti-derpressant medication? Friend found out she was pregnant & doc stopped all her antidepressan
Monday, June 7th, 2010 at
7:10 am
My friend recently found out she was about 7 weeks pregnant. Her OB/GYN doc stopped all her anti-depressant medications. She is super depressed, but doc still says no anti-depressant medications. Her mother & her ex-husband (father of her older child) have died within the last 11 months. I try to encourage & go do fun female stuff with her but she just stays depressed. Are there any anti-depressant medications for pregnancy?
Tagged with: antidepressan • Antiderpressant • found • Friend • Medication • Pregnancy • Pregnant • STOPPED
Filed under: Anti Depressants Pregnancy
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First of all the Doc should know better then to put a pregnant mother with depression at risk . I am 35 weeks prego and it was a choice the doc gave me for myself to either stay on the meds or go off. Docters would rather treat you for depression then have to risk a depressed new mother. It may also depend what medication she was on and ask if it is possible to lower dosage instead or switch the med.
Omega 3 fish oil is what one doc recommended to me as it has benifits for baby and depressed mother ,, good luck i hope this helped.
I hear zoloft is fine to take, for the first few months, but then as the time gets closer you need to stop, so that you won’t have a sleeping baby during delivery, you want to hear it cry and know its okay, you don’t want it to be a lazy.
YES! I cant believe a doc would just cut her off like that, that is horribly dangerous! I was able to safely take Lexapro during pregnancy and nursing.
PLEASE encourage your friend to see a different doctor, specifically for the depression. All meds will cross the barrier and access the baby, but a person must measure the risk vs. the benefits, and in MANY depressed cases… there really NEED to be meds. Even if she manages to carry the baby to term, she may still face severe post partum depression…. better to get on something NOW!
Good luck!
I’m so sorry that her Doc is so ill-informed about this subject!
In MY personal experience SOME are okay. I have taken Paxil for almost 6 years now, and taken it through an entire pregnancy, and and entire year of breastfeeding ( My son is almost 4 and is PERFECT ), and I am almost 8 months pregnant with our second child, and have still taken it, and everything is fine. Maybe the drug that she was on WAS harmful to her unborn child, but Paxil has had no bad affects on my son or my pregnancies. I take Paxil ( 20 mil/day) for anxiety, but I know that it can be prescribed for depression as well. Pregnancy in general can be VERY depressing for some women, and I’m very surprised that the Doc didn’t want to just change her meds instead of cutting them off all together. Good Luck, and I really hope this helps!!
The only form of medication she is allowed to take is homeopathic. Best is to take her to a pharmacy and ask someone there.
Almost all anti-depressants are considered somewhat unsafe for pregnancy, but doctors will still use them in extreme cases. Sometimes they are a better alternative to the depression depending on the severity of the case. I would encourage your friend to get a second opinion.
I would also encourage her to get in some intense therapy, individual and group. Dealing with the death of parents can be very difficult. That combined with the added emotional state of pregnancy will mean that she will need some really good help and support.
Tell you friend to find a different doctor!! Do not take advice from people on here who say that a certain anti-depressant is okay. She will need to be supervised while on any medicatoin, but there are medicines that doctors will prescribe in certain cases.
Anti-depressant medications are for people with clinical depression, not for people with normal reactions to unpleasant things. Grief is not a disease to be managed with drugs.
If she’s not chemically imbalanced, so to speak, and depressed because of that, there’s not a huge rationale for drugs, and they’re really unlikely to make her feel better (save for having a placebo effect).
Even if the drugs were guaranteed safe for pregnancy, counselling would be a _much_ better idea, there.
Apologies if I’m missing something and your friend is, say, suicidal _on top of_ being miserable about the deaths. (And, as far as that goes, I think the ‘just being there’ bit might be better for somebody grieving rather than ‘fun female stuff.’)