I just need a little bit of help. I'd like to have a child soon but I'm on Effexor anti depressant. My doctor has said he would like to see me give up taking the anti depressant as soon as I find out I'm pregnant but I've had girlfriends who had children why on effexor who didn't have any problems at all. There babies are perfectly healthy. I don't know If I can sort of live without my anti depressants and I have heard you can take them while you're pregnant. Any advice guys. I need some help. I'm sort of in a rock and a hard place.

Basically, there haven't been any studies to show that Effexor is/is not harmful to babies in the womb, so just as a rule they advise talking to your doctor.
However, remember that it is an addictive drug, and anything that's in your bloodstream will go into the baby's.

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I wouldn't judge those friends' babies just yet. It's possible the babies endured neurological problems (from the effexor) that won't surface until they're adolescents or young adults. But there isn't much point on worrying about it because even if the babies (who were born from a mother taking effexor) do grow up to have neurological issues, there would probably be no way to prove it came from the effexor.

I would say just research it as much as possible and get opinions from at least a few different doctors to hear what they have to say so you can be prepared (and know what to expect if you do decide to keep taking the effexor). Maybe you can lower the dose or take smaller amounts at different times. Do what you have to do. No human being is perfect. Every baby is born with genetic tendencies towards some bad thing or other. At least if you talked to some different doctors and got different opinions, you can be a little more prepared about what to expect when you DO have problems with your kid.

I've discussed this with my phychiatrist - he said a lot of women
come off anti-depressants when they're pregnant and then
never have to go back on them. There's a lot of proof that an
unfilfilled primal urge to have a baby can be the route of depression
in women.

He thinks it's absolutely necessary to come off them.

I plan to stop taking my meds (for ocd/depression) a while before
I try to conceive so I can see how it goes. I'd rather
do that than start to mess with my emotions/hormones when I'm
already pregnant as there will be so many changes happening anyway.

It is a tough one, I'm glad you brought it up. I'd love to know
as many opinions on this as possible.

My mother-in-law is a midwife and she also says it's a MUST to
come off the meds.

It's a scary thing to do I know

My doctor (shrink, not GYN) says that basically it's an unknown - they don't know that anti-depressents will hurt a fetus, but they don't know that they won't. So basically it's preferable to come off them, but sometimes with serious depression it's worth it (maybe? it's all a gamble) to take the risk.

I'm on Wellbutrin, and going through the same thing. I'm not really worried about weaning off the pills, but I do need to quit smoking, which I'd like to take care of before that (wellbutrin is the same thing as zyban). That's actually why I went on them, I got seriously depressed when I tried to quit smoking a few years ago. I was trying to stay on them until I quit those last couple of cigs every day or two, but what happened was that I wound up going up eventually becoming a real smoker again (not sure if this speaks against wellbutrin for quitting smoking - I kept meaning to and didn't get around to really trying to quit altogether, and I started really smoking again when my ceiling fell in).

I would like to be off them (in general, but especially for pregnancy). My experience previously going off anti-depressants was that by the point I'd been taking them a few years, they didn't seem to be making a difference one way or the other anyway. I actually accidently cut what I'm taking now in half because she wrote me a prescription where I had to take four pills daily when previously it had been two in a higher dosage. I didn't notice until a month later when I looked at the date on the bottle and the amount of pills left.

Sorry, I don't have any real advice, just the same situation. I am worried about the stress of trying to get pregant - at my age, it could take a while, if it happens at all. I've also already logged in hours of crying over it while I argued with my boyfriend the point that my age means we can't wait until some mythical someday when we have 'enough' money. Actually, I more or less tipped over and mourned the death of the possibility, and now I think of ttc as a token guesture I'll need to get out of the way before applying to foster a child who is freed for adoption. But I don't know if this means I'll really be able to take it when I don't get pregnant.

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I don't honestly believe this is the case for me. I have accepted that I will need anti depressants for most of my life. I was a depressed child and now a depressed adult so I don't believe that childrearing is going to be a magic cure all.

I'm quite concerned because even though it's an unknown quantity that is more scary than knowing what could happen. I know it takes 1 to 2 weeks for the anti depressant medication to be completely removed from your system and therefore you can come off after you find out you're pregnant at least.

Thanks for all the responses guys. I'm quite concerned about all of this.

Depression can also apparently be bad for a fetus in some cases. If there's a risk of sucicide, obviously, that's when you might want to take the risk of the pills, but even just plowing though with major depression may not be advisable. Not that I'm trying to tell you that you shouldn't try to go off (or that you should), just something my doctor mentioned.

Ah, it's all so confusing isn't it? Different answers all around. So far, I've really only seriously discussed pregnancy with my shrink, not my physical doctors, since I haven't really tried yet and so forth. But I did mention wanting to get pregnant the last time I had a physical, and the last time I had an gyn checkup. My internist was all, "Well now is fine, but make sure you do it before you're 40." I know what she means, but she made it sound like May 3rd 2009, I can concieve no problem, but the next day I'm just shit out of luck. Admittedly, she doesn't know I've been crying over this basically since I turned 35. I specifically asked the gyn if I was too old, giving him the disclaimer that I realize he can only give me generalities (it was even my first time seeing him, so he didn't even have much history with me), and he said "Oh, heavens no. I have 45 year-old patients expecting their first." Not sure if he knew about the anti-depressants, I put them on the chart, but he may not have taken note, and I wasn't asking for advice about ttc immediately.

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^ I'm so sorry doll. It's so hard when you want something so bad and everything is just getting in the way. My doctor is really harsh about it. He is not gentle at all and he's reaction is that anyone who's not married and not a God fearing Christian shouldn't have children so I know it's hard to talk about things when everyone is telling you different things. Hopefully you'll be able to have a kid. It's not too late for you. I'm sure after 40 is not that bad. I mean, women wait for a long time to have children nowadays. But don't cry about it. I hope it works out for you.

Thanks. I am a worrier, it is completely possible I will have a child or children in the next few years, and then spend the entire rest of my life in a constant state of worry over them!

I am sorry for derailing your thread. I felt I should respond (er, in addition to the normal way I feel compelled to weigh in on everything in the entire world, whether what I have to say is particularly noteworthy or not) because I have discussed with doctors this very question quite recently, but I should have kept my bio-clock fears more out of it, because nothing is stopping me from making my own darn thread on that issue.

Not that my information was definitive, but maybe it helps explain why answers are so contradictory - they just don't know if it's dangerous, so some doctors err on one side, and some on the other.

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