pregnancy & meds

I don't know. You should definitely talk to your doctors though. You don't wanna end up being unhealthy while you're pregnant. Maybe if you decide to go off it you could try getting on some asacol and rowasa or something. Good luck =)

It's far more dangerous to get in a serious flare while pregnant than the risks from the meds. 

Before we decided to start trying for a baby, i went to a high risk OB, and saw a man who had been doing it for years and had lots of experince with meds and the risks.

I was on immuran at the time, and he said, while it is classed as a D, that it wasn't as bad as it was made out to be, that even though there were lots of drugs classified as D, only a few were really that bad, he didnt tell me what they were.

He thought it best for me to stay on the meds, it can take up to 6 months for immuran/6mp to get out of your system, and of course in those six months you can either flare, or if you get pregnant its not going to matter, the possibilites of birth defects are in the spine and brain, which are formed in the first few weeks.

The most important thing he told me was to go ahead and start taking a prenatal, or a flintstones vitamin, AND to take folic acid!  the full recommended amount.  Folic acid, and other Bvitamins are very important to brain development.  The thing that is the most common from 6mp (according to the dr) is a cleft pallete, which compared to what could happen in a flare, is no big deal.

What most people worry about is spinabiphida (sp?)  and i cant remember the exact numbers but this will give you an idea.

Every woman, regardless, has a .01% chance of having a child with that.  A woman taking one of those drugs, has like a 5% chance or something like that. however, taking folic acid, before you get pregnant and during the pregnancy, takes it back down to like 1%.  Now those might not be the exact numbers, but you get the idea.

I also have to take pheonobarbital which is considered a class D drug now, with the same problems, but for years was used to prevent early labor.

Anyway, long story to get to a short point, i was on immuran my entire pregnancy, and i have a perfect little boy, he is super smart, no problems at birth, none that had anything to do with that anyway, and no problems now!

Its just very very important that you take that folic acid, and make sure that you see a high risk OB who specializes in meds, and that your high risk OB, your GI, and the one specializing in meds, if its a different one, stay in contact!

good luck!

 

There's a link to a good article (it's titled something like Pregnancy and IBD) in the sticky thread titled "UC resources" that I encourage you to read. I personally would rather say on a med like 6MP than to go off of it, and risk a severe flare. There are quite a few women on this board and on the CD board who have healthy Azathioprine/6MP babies.

I'm about 4 weeks pregnant and am taking Lialda 3.6g/day and one Rowasa enema every night. My GI doctor has made it clear that the risk for the drugs is low compared to my risk if I stop taking them (I will definitely flare if I reduce them, when I went to 2.4 g Lialda a day my symptoms started coming back)

Here's my concern: I've also been taking Boswellia, which I find helps control my symptoms (I'm better when I take it, get worse when I don't, consistently). When I found out I was pregnant I did some research and most sources say to avoid it while pregnant (both due to a lack of studies on it and some indication from Indian studies that it may induce abortion). So I stopped taking it a few days ago, and this morning I wake up with bloody stools, something I have not had in weeks.

I have a call in to my holistic doctor to see what she has to say, and am waiting for a call back.

Has anyone else taken Boswellia while they were pregnant? I took it for about 2 weeks while I was pregnant, before I knew (conception until I found out, I don't count the time before conception :p)

I ended up taking one (300mg) today because I just *can't* go into a flare right now. I'll be devastated if I lose the baby over it though :(

summerstorm, I would love to participate in something like that. How do I go about finding out how to participate?

becky-there isnt much info because they wont put pregnant women on medicine just to test it.

weevil-i went through the aed registry, but thats for seizure meds, they actually contacted me through my drs office.
I searched the web and found otispregnancy.org which seems to do some studies. You could do web searches, or ask your doctor who you could talk to about it. Or even call the FDA or CDC (not sure which one does those) and ask them.

weevil, would turmeric be safe? It helps me a bit, and it's basically just a spice. I mean I'd check first, but it's an idea.

I just went to my OB doctor last week with the same concerns. My husband and I have been wanting to get pregnant for several months now. At my last GI appointment, my doctor told me that I would have to be on some kind of meds to keep the UC under control through pregnancy. I'm not a fan of taking meds anyways and thinking of doing it while being pregnant really concerned me. That is when I went to my OB doctor. My OB doctor told me that I had to be in remission and off any steroid drugs before I even tried to get pregnant. She said those first few weeks of development are so important to the organs, hearing, etc that the meds could cause some problems. Both my docs said it is worse for the baby to have a flare during pregnancy and do nothing than it was to take some meds. My OB doctor said that there are some meds I could take once pregnant and past the first few weeks. She even said if I had to do some low doses of steroids at that point it would be safe for the baby. I will also mention that my OB doc said it might be harder for me to get pregnant now than it was with my first child. She said the steroids sometimes mess with a woman estrogen levels and such. She even mentioned maybe having to take fertility drugs if we couldn't get pregnant on our own the first few months, just something to help with my hormone levels. So for now no baby for us. Going back to the GI doctor tomorrow since the Entecort is not working. Hoping whatever comes next will put me in remission. Good Luck to you!