Paxil, Antidepressants & Birth Defects

More reasons to not use medication during pregnancy. Paxil is now classified as a Class D drug--known to cause birth defects. This is a warning for all anti-depressants.

The FDA said early results of two studies showed that women who took Paxil during the first three months of pregnancy were almost two times as likely to have a baby with a heart defect as women who received other antidepressants or women in the general population. While the studies suggest the risk of birth defects is almost double, the risk in real terms is much smaller. (emphasis added)

This research disturbs me. So many women of childbearing age take antidepressants.

Another study showed an increased risk for newborn withdrawal symptoms for women who take SSRIs in their third trimester. These withdrawal symptoms were the result of being cut-off from the medications that they had been receiving through the mother's placenta. The most commonly reported symptoms were irritability, increased crying, tremors, shortened breath, nausea, and convulsions. These symptoms typically lasted only one to four days after birth, and rarely lasted more than a few weeks. Because of this, doctors are being urged to recommend to their patients that they lower their dose, or stop taking antidepressants altogether, two weeks before their due date.

Concerns:

• So by taking an anti-depressant, a woman risks her child's heart health.
• Would a woman struggling with depression want to cope with a child going through withdrawal on top of everything else?
• Children raised by depressed mothers have more than double a chance of having depression.
• A mother's risk of depression rises with each additional child over two.

The politically incorrect question no one wants to ask: Should women depressed enough to need antidepressants even consider pregnancy?

Before you rail against me for being harsh, consider the significant increase in stress that an infant brings. Depression risk increases with children...especially more than two children (pray for me everybody HA!).

My recommendation? Depressed women who wish to bear children should spend a year weening off the meds, increasing their B vitamins significantly, especially Folate, exercise, and take stress-coping classes that included simple biofeedback methods, breathing techniques and stretching. If, after all this, depression still persists, perhaps child bearing should be delayed.

A child living with a depressed mother will be more than twice as likely to be depressed herself/himself. For better or worse, children (even of working mothers with a different primary care giver) learn optimism, pessimissm and general coping from moms moreso than dads.

Motherhood is complicated, that's for sure.