Baby Blues
Why taking anti-depressants during pregnancy might not be such a bad idea.
by Kim Brooks
July 2, 2007
It's always seemed to me there's something about having babies that drives women insane. Not insane in the colloquial sense of "frustrated" or "really pissed off," insane as in certifiably, googly-eyed, talking-to-oneself-on-public-transit, insane. Maybe it's hormonal. Maybe it's the chronic sleep deprivation. Maybe it's the crushing anxiety of being responsible for every aspect of another human being's health and happiness. Maybe it's the pressure society puts on mothers to be perfect and utterly beyond reproach, the sun around which their children's universe revolves. Or maybe it's my imagination — the fact that I've been struggling with depression and anxiety for most of my life and have always wondered how the transition into motherhood might alter the delicate mental balance I've worked so hard to achieve.
Whatever the cause, when I became pregnant this past December, I was just as afraid of losing my sanity as I was of losing my lunch, largely because I assumed I would have to go off of the anti-depressant I'd been taking since the age of nineteen. I did remember reading somewhere that this was not neccessarily the case, that some women were able to continue on their medication throughout pregnancy. But somehow this piece of information didn't jibe with the general tenor of hysteria that seemed to be surrounding pregnancy and all things chemical: anyone who's been pregnant recently knows that every substance an expectant mother could possibly put inside her body from pain-relievers to Camembert is subject to scrutiny, so if imported cheese and over-the-counter pain relievers were now off limits, how could selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (the name alone sounds as baby-safe as Drano)
I immediately began picturing my infant with bloodshot eyes and a bad case of the shakes. be innocuous to my fetus's tender neurons? I didn't know, but I needed to find out as soon as possible.
For me, anti-depressants have never been the "happy pill" some of my well-meaning but pharmo-phobic friends have made them out to be. More like a coping pill, it's helped me to deal with my mood-swings and anxiety rather than buckling under them, helped me to maintain my status as a (more or less) normal person. This personal history, coupled with a family history of postpartum depression, didn't seem to bode well for my quality of life prospects should I go off my meds, particularly in the midst of a hormonal roller-coaster and massive life-change. On the other hand, I wasn't thrilled about the prospect of medicating my unborn child. After all, despite having inherited its genetic material from two writers who knew the inside of a therapist's office before mastering multiplication tables, surely the little one had some small chance at a healthy psyche if we just left its brain alone.
Most anti-depressants, particularly the most commonly-prescribed variety, SSRI's, are considered Category B drugs, meaning that, while animal studies show no risk, there have been no studies conducted on pregnant women. This seemed much less ominous than, say, Category X drugs, which sound as if they should come with a skull and crossbones on the label. There are probably many women who would have been relieved by this piece of information and not given the issue another thought. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those women. I immediately began picturing my infant with bloodshot eyes and a bad case of the shakes. I envisioned a memoir written thirty years in the future that began, "My first encounter with psycho-pharmaceuticals began just minutes after conception."
©2007 Kim Brooks and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kim Brooks has written for Glimmer Train, One Story, Epoch
and the Missouri Review. She also writes non-fiction for
The Crier. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son. |
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