ADHD & Pregnancy

Now that baby brother is here, I wanted to talk about ADHD in pregnancy. In my previous pregnancy with Jackie, I stopped taking my stimulants as soon as I found out I was pregnant. This pregnancy, I stayed on my medication the entire time so I have experience with both ends of the spectrum. Lets get into it!

ADHD & Pregnancy | Weighing Pros and Cons

I have been on stimulant medication for my ADHD since I was 16 and I was 25 when I got pregnant with my daughter. I went off them immediately when I found out I was pregnant because that's what my psychiatrist told me to do. Staying off medication in pregnancy was what the general consensus in medicine at the time was telling people to do.

Well, within a few months after I had Jackie, studies started coming out of Europe and the US talking about the impacts of these medications on development of the baby. These studies showed there is not as much of an affect as people were expecting. Yes, there can be an impact, but it's not as high as what was previously believed. Now the general consensus is, are there more risks associated with the mom not taking the medication or with the mom staying on her medication through the pregnancy? Now the situations are evaluated on a case by case basis. In my case, my doctor and I decided it was better for me to stay on my stimulant.

I talked to my psychiatrist before I even got pregnant and we discussed what the best option for me was going to be as far as my medication. If I were to go off of them, it is recommended to do so a couple of months before you get pregnant. We went over the side effects of my ADHD, which are even more exaggerated because I'm already a mom, and collectively decided I would stay on my medication with close observation, which I was very comfortable with. My OB sent me to a high risk OBGYN so I was double monitored.

The high risk OBGYN does more intensive scans and tests to determine the health of the baby and all of the scans showed he was developing great. I continued to see the high-risk OBGYN throughout my pregnancy about every eight weeks and every time I went to see them, they did a full anatomy scan and measured everything. They confirmed he was right on track for where he should be. The high-risk OB continued to prescribe me my ADHD medication.

I was really happy with the way everything went through the pregnancy. I went on the lowest dose possible for me to function before I got pregnant in preparation for baby and stayed on that dosage throughout the pregnancy. I did notice the further along my pregnancy I got, the longer it took for my meds to start working. I don't know if that's because I had such hard mornings, or if it's because my meds just took longer to kick in because of everything that changed in my body through pregnancy. I felt like I spent more time in the mornings down and just trying to get motivation to get through the morning, and then by like 11 a.m., I was good to go. That felt like a really long time since I take my meds around 7:30 every morning.

All in all, I feel like things went really, really well. Now that I am all the way through the pregnancy, I can tell you that baby brother came out with absolutely no issues (except his cute little breech baby legs) and my delivery went totally normal. He's absolutely perfect and we're so glad to have him here healthy and happy. I'm so grateful I was able to be the best and highest functioning mom I could through the entire pregnancy and I credit that in part to being able to stay on my meds. I hope telling my story can help someone else who is worried about their ADHD in their pregnancy have the confidence to talk to their doctor about options.