ADD During Pregnancy

ADD During Pregnancy | Oufitt Details

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ADD During Pregnancy | Other Posts

It turns out, I did a few blog posts about this when I was pregnant. I went back and read them and honestly they were interesting at the time but not as helpful as I wish they had been. So this post is going to be much more detailed and I am going to try to provide as much information and insight as possible! You can read my ADD and Pregnancy post here and my ADD Post Pregnancy post here.

ADD During Pregnancy | Medication During Pregnancy

I have been taking 20 mgs of Adderall XR for 10 years. From the moment I started taking it, my psychiatrist made it very clear that I could not take Adderall while pregnant. Adderall is calssified as a class C drug because there have not been studies done on pregnant women but there has been adverse effects in lab animal testing. Adderall was shown to increase birth defects and increased miscarriage in lab mice. It was also found to cause premature birth, low birth weight and chemical withdrawl syndrome in newborns whose mother's used Adderall while pregnant. This all seems VERY scary. Which is why my doctor was so insistent.I didn't find out I was pregnant with Jackie until I was 7 weeks along. Had I known earlier, I would have stopped taking my meds much earlier. Jackie was born full term, at a normal birth weight and did not have any other issues.

Most other ADD/ADHD medications are just like Adderall. There haven't been tests done on humans (understandably) so doctors are not willing to risk the health of the baby unless it is determential to the mother to stop taking the medication. There are some cases where a doctor will work with you to either keep you on your meds or move you to a medication that is less risky for your baby. In most cases, you can get by without taking your meds for 9 months. So let's talk about how.

ADD During Pregnancy | How To Cope Unmedicated

I have talked before about how I cope with my ADD on a regular basis, you can read that post here. These things became so much more important while I was pregnant. Obviously I coudn't take my meds but sticking to a routine and staying organized became crucial. I was lucky enough to not be terribly sick when I was pregnant. The women in my family all get debilitatingly sick when pregnant, except for me. So I was able to stick to my regular routine and get myself very organized before Jackie came. The nesting phase hit me around my second trimester and I leaned into it, hard. The Husband joked that I might get rid of him with all the purging I was doing. And even though I didn't really want to, I kept it up until Jackie was born. I probably reoganized every single space in our apartment a dozen times. But it helped.

I also kept very detailed to do lists. I have talked about this so many times before but it really works for me. Every category has a color. I write down each task and use the color for the category it belongs to. This is an exercise I do at the beginning of the week and then daily. I've learned that if I do this more than just once during the week, I don't forget to do anything that comes up throughout the week. I typically use a planner to do this but you can do it on a piece of paper if you don't like a planner.

Sticking to a routine was something that was a little harder. Not every day was the same when I was pregnant. But I did get up every single day around 6 am, got dressed and tried to keep to a routine as much as possible.

I have found a few things since I was pregnant with Jackie that would have been really helpful during that time. One of them is the Rad & Happy Yearly Goal Tracking sheet. I am also loving the Rad & Happy undated Planner!

ADD During Pregnancy | Anxiety

If you have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, you very likely have some level of anxiety as well. You may take separate medication for that or it may be handled by your ADD/ADHD medications. In my case, Adderall was able to help my daily anxiety. Since I couldn't take it while pregnant, I delt with much more anxiety than I am used to. If you do feel like you are struggling with your anxiety when pregnant, talk to your doctor. You may be able to go on another medication that can help!

In my case, I just suffered throug the anxiety until I was able to get back on my meds. This was hard and I probably should have seen a specialist like I said I would. I would wake up in the middle of the night with a million things running through my head, most of which I had no control over. I had so much anxiety about my water breaking (which is less common than you would think) that I carried around puppy pee pads to sit on during the last month of my pregnancy. I slept on them, sat on them. Literally everywhere. And they ended up breaking my water in the hospital while I was in labor. The best thing I did for my anxiety was to stay busy. I went into full on nesting mode and it kept my mind on getting our lives ready for Jackie. When I started to get anxious about something, I would talk to someone. Never let that kind of thing fester. It doesn't help.

ADD During Pregnancy | Post Delivery

After you have had your baby, you would think you could go back to taking your medication. This is not the case. If you plan on breast feeding, it is my understanding that you should not be taking your medication. The medication can be passed on to the baby through your milk. Since a baby's brain is not done developing yet, those medications can impact brain development. I knew that I would not be able to take my meds if I breast fed Jackie, so I decided to bottle feed her from the moment she was born. You can read my post about Why I Chose Not To Breastfeed here.

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