Tylenol and Other Painkillers May Be Risky During Pregnancy

If you’re pregnant with a baby boy, you’ll want to pay close attention to the latest research findings out of the UK. New research suggests that prolonged use of the painkiller paracetamol (acetaminophen in the U.S.), aspirin, and ibuprofen may be linked to increasing the risk of un-descended testicles in male babies – a condition called “cryptorchidism” that affects between 3 and 4 percent of all full-term babies.

Cryptorchidism puts the affected babies at risk for infertility later in life and a higher chance of cancer in both testicles. In fact, little boys who are born with an un-descended testicle have a 20 to 40 times increased risk of developing testicular cancer later in life. That’s why doctors recommend surgery and hormone therapy to help the affected testicle descend into the scrotum.

This new research study looked at 2,000 pregnant women and their babies. The European researchers found that women who used more than one painkiller at the same time – for example, ibuprofen (Advil) and acetaminophen (Tylenol) – were at seven times the risk of giving birth to baby boys with some form of un-descended testicles, compared to women who took no painkillers at all.

Second Trimester – a Significant Time

The second trimester appeared to be the most sensitive time for babies. Taking any painkiller in the second trimester doubled the risk of cryptorchidism. Of the various painkillers, ibuprofen and aspirin put the babies at four times the risk, and acetaminophen (called “paracetamol” Europe) doubled the baby’s risk. Taking more than one painkiller simultaneously in the second trimester increased the baby’s risk by 16 times!

The researchers believe that taking painkillers during pregnancy interferes with the natural balance of male hormones (such as testosterone) at work in unborn male babies, and this may slow down normal fetal development. It’s possible that the second trimester is more crucial, since it’s in the middle part of pregnancy that male testicles start to descend into the scrotum.

Lead scientist of the study, Dr. Henrik Leffers, said this: “If exposure to endocrine disruptors is the mechanism behind the increasing reproductive problems among young men in the Western World, this research suggests that particular attention should be paid to the use of mild analgesics during pregnancy, as this could be a major reason for the problems.”

More Research Needed

This study had some limitations. For example, not all of the women accurately remembered how often they took painkillers. More research needs to be done before doctors can recommend that you take no painkillers what so ever.

The research is published in November 8, 2010 issue of Human Reproduction, Europe’s leading reproductive medical journal.

Current Recommendations on Pain Medication during Pregnancy

For years, doctors have routinely recommended that pregnant women use acetaminophen (Tylenol) to relieve any aches and pains during pregnancy. Aspirin, ibuprofen, and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are typically not recommended in pregnancy due to their link to miscarriage, slow fetal growth, and other problems. Aspirin is sometimes prescribed to pregnant women with preeclampsia (high blood pressure and protein in the urine), but in these special cases, the good must outweigh the bad effects.

This new study does make you think twice about taking any medications during pregnancy – even ones that are considered “safe” in small doses.

What do you think about this new study? Are you willing to take medication during pregnancy?

Tips to Get Pregnant Faster

by DP Nguyen 10 Comments

Fertility and conception are tricky matters. For some women, getting pregnant is as easy as pie. All they have to do is jump in the sack with a willing partner, toss out their contraception, and enjoy the ride. Unfortunately, not all women have it that easy. For the unlucky ones, conception becomes more of a science. It may become a nightly chore, a mating ritual that revolves around using ovulation kits, using period tracker apps on their iPhones, a succession of fertility tests to pinpoint possible complications, visiting fertility specialists and so forth.

If you are one of the unfortunate couples having a hard time conceiving, consider the following tips to help you get pregnant faster.

Make Love Every Other Day

This is just common sense. If you want to get pregnant, you have to have sex. A lot of sex. It’s as easy as that. Doctors recommend that couples trying to get pregnant should have sex every other day, not every day. Waiting that extra day helps build up the sperm supply – and increases your chance of pregnancy.

Some women delay having sex until around the time they ovulate. While having sex around the time of ovulation helps your chances of pregnancy, you don’t want to wait until you ovulate to make love. Some women don’t always ovulate when they think they will, so making lots of passionate love is not only fun (for both of you), but it’s covering your bases so you don’t miss any opportunity to get pregnant.

The key here – have lots and lots of sex.

Best Sexual Position for Pregnancy

To boost your chance of getting pregnant, you may want to try the missionary sexual position (man on top). This helps deposit the sperm close to the cervix, and it may just give you that extra push to get pregnant. You will want to avoid any position where the woman is on top – this makes it easier for sperm to leak out.

This might sound funny, but after you’ve finished having sex, lay on your back with your legs up in the air. This will prevent sperm from falling out of you, and it may help sperm stay inside your vagina longer.

Use an Ovulation Kit

If you are serious about wanting to get pregnant, you should invest in an ovulation kit. They are available over the counter at any pharmacy, and they will help you predict when you’re ovulating (i.e. most fertile) and most likely to get pregnant.

Ovulation prediction kits work by measuring the level of luteinizing hormone (LH) in your body – LH is one of the hormones that signals your ovaries to release an egg during ovulation. LH levels rise about 36 hours before ovulation, but most ovulation kits won’t detect it until 24 hours beforehand. To get the most use out of an ovulation kit, you should start testing your urine nine days (a week and two days) after the start of your last period. This way, you won’t accidently miss your ovulation period.

If you’re looking for a useful ovulation prediction kit, consider the ClearBlue Easy – which measures both LH and estrogen levels, and it can predict ovulation up to five days before it happens. Check it out.

Free Methods of Calculating Ovulation

Ovulation prediction kits can be expensive, though. So if you want an easier way to figure out when you’re ovulation, consider using an iPhone or an iPod touch app that tracks your period. I use the Period Tracker on my iPod touch – which tracks the length of my cycles and calculates when I’m ovulating.

As a rule of thumb, women with 28-day menstrual cycles typically ovulate 14 days after the first day of their period – usually at the end of the second week of your cycle.

If you’d rather go the old-fashioned route, you can always monitor your cervical mucus to track your ovulation. While it’s not as reliable as an ovulation kit, it’s absolutely free. You just have to keep track of your vaginal discharge. When you’re ovulating, your cervical mucus is thick and stretchy – if you touch it with your fingers, you can stretch it about an inch before it breaks. (Gross, but a good way to tell whether or not you’re heading toward ovulation zone.)

You can also chart your basal body temperature to tell whether or not you’re ovulating. Your temperature typically lowers about half a degree 24 hours before you ovulate, and then increases during ovulation.

Have Sex before Ovulation

The best way to get pregnant is to have lots of glorious sex the week that you will ovulate. Because sperm can live up three to five days after ejaculation, you’ll want to maximize your chance of pregnancy with lots of sex that week. Unfortunately, your egg will only survive about 24 hours after you ovulate. So it’s best to have sex before ovulation, not afterwards.

Good luck!

New Study: Severe Morning Sickness is Genetic on Both Sides of Families

by DP Nguyen 1 Comment

Ask anyone who has ever been pregnant, and they will regale you with stories of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy – commonly known as “morning sickness.” Researchers estimate that between 50 to 90 percent of all pregnant women will experience some level of morning sickness in their first trimester. Some pregnant women are just slightly nauseous, while others have horrible bouts of vomiting and queasiness.

Morning sickness is one of the early signs of pregnancy, and it can hit women as early as 6 weeks pregnant. It typically starts to peak around 8 or 9 weeks pregnant, and for most women, it disappears completely by the second trimester. (That’s why the second trimester is called the “honeymoon” phase of pregnancy – all your horrible first trimester pregnancy symptoms go away!)

Unfortunately, for a small number of pregnant women, they continue to have severe morning sickness throughout all 40 weeks of pregnancy. This condition is called “hyperemesis gravidarum,” and it’s defined by extreme, persistent nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. In other words, you are constantly throwing up and feeling nauseous throughout your entire pregnancy. This condition can lead to dehydration, malnutrition, and significant weight loss. Approximately 60,000 pregnant women are hospitalized annual from this extreme form of morning sickness.

For years, the cause of hyperemesis gravidarum was largely unknown, though researchers had several theories. Many scientists believed that severe morning sickness was caused by the rapidly rising levels of the pregnancy hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), which is secreted by the placenta. That’s why women who carried twins are more likely to develop hyperemesis gravidarum.

According to a new study, published online today in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, pregnant women whose sisters suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum are 17 times more likely to suffer from this debilitating morning sickness.

Researchers from the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California (USC) traced the family histories of women with hyperemesis gravidarum and discovered that this severe morning sickness had a strong genetic component.

Women who had sisters, mothers, and grandmothers on both sides of the family (paternal and maternal) were at a heightened risk of developing hyperemesis gravidarum during pregnancy. This was especially true if the pregnant women had sisters who suffered from the pregnancy complication.

The authors of this study looked at 650 participants. The pregnant women in the study had been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum; the controls were women with at least two pregnancies that lasted longer than 27 weeks and who had not suffered from severe morning sickness. The researchers compared the family history of morning sickness in the pregnant women and the controls.

They discovered that the women with hyperemesis gravidarum with a sister who suffered from the same form of severe morning sickness were 17.3 times more likely to have the condition. In addition, 33 percent of the pregnant women reported having a mother who suffered from the condition, compared to only 8 percent of the controls.

When the researchers traced back to grandmothers’ pregnancies, they found that 18 percent of the pregnant women with severe morning sickness had a maternal grandmother with the same condition, and 23 percent of the pregnant women had a paternal grandmother – suggesting this condition is inherited through the father’s side of the family.

“Because the incidence of hyperemesis gravidarum is most commonly reported to be 0.5 percent in the population, and the sisters of cases have as much as an 18-fold increased familial risk for HG compared to controls, this study provides strong evidence for a genetic component to extreme nausea and vomiting in pregnancy,” the researchers concluded in the study.

You May Also Enjoy Reading…

10 Tips for Dealing and Surviving Morning Sickness.
My Agonizing Decision to Take Prescription Medicines for Severe Morning Sickness

Baby Poop Decoder: Guide to Baby Stools

by DP Nguyen 5 Comments

Baby poop is gross, but someone’s gonna wipe that baby’s bottom. He or she just isn’t old enough to grasp the meaning of bladder control and wipe before you flush. So mom and dad, you have to step up and do the job for baby until he or she is ready to potty train.

If you’re a first-time parent, you may be surprised to see that baby poop doesn’t always look the same. Every time you change your sweetie’s diaper, your baby’s stool may be a different color, and even a different consistency. With so many shades and consistencies, you might be wondering what’s normal and what should make you worry.

Eww – should I call the pediatrician? Or is this color normal?

Here’s my “Baby Poop Decoder” to help you on your way. You’ll quickly find out what’s perfectly normal, and what should concern you.

Eating Peanuts During Pregnancy Linked to Peanut Allergies

by DP Nguyen 2 Comments

The statistics of food allergies among American children is on the rise. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of children with food allergies increased 18 percent between 1997 and 2007. To put it in perspective for you, about three million children under the age of 18 has a food or digestive allergy. Time Magazine reports that six percent of children under age three has a food allergy, and two percent are allergic to peanuts.

Researchers and concerned parents want to know – what’s causing their children to develop these allergies? Could it have something to do with the foods that pregnant women eat? That’s a strong possibility, according to a new study published in the November issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

This new research study suggests that eating peanuts during pregnancy increases your baby’s risk of developing peanut allergies later in life. In fact, the more peanuts that a pregnant woman eats in her third trimester, the higher her baby’s risk of being sensitive and possibly allergic to peanuts.

To conduct the study, researchers looked at 503 infants, between the ages of 3 and 15 months, who displayed signs of milk and egg allergies. (These babies did not have peanut allergies, but the researchers theorized that they were more likely to develop reactions to peanuts.) The infants of mothers who ate peanut products more than twice a week during pregnancy had stronger sensitivity to peanuts, compared to babies whose moms did not eat as many peanut products. In a nutshell, moms who ate peanuts during pregnancy were at an increased risk of having a baby with a peanut allergy.

The results of this study are only the latest in a string of conflicting studies. Some studies have found no link between eating peanuts during pregnancy and food allergy development, while others, like this one, suggest that there may be a connection.

Research studies are confusing, but try not to feel guilty if you love eating peanuts. Many parents believe that you need to eat peanuts during pregnancy to expose your child, while others argue that you need to avoid it completely out of fear of peanut allergies. The choice is up to you, but trust me, you’re not the only one flipping back and forth.

Even the American Academy of Pediatrics doesn’t know the answer to this question. Between 1998 and 2000, the academy advised pregnant women with a family history of food allergies to avoid peanuts to help reduce the chances of food allergies in their children. Then in 2008, small studies in England found that there was no link to peanut consumption during pregnancy and peanut allergies in newborns, so this policy was reversed.

The bottom line: the research is mixed and there is no consensus. But one thing is clear – there is not enough scientific evidence to suggest that you could completely cut out peanuts from your diet. The best thing you can do for your baby is to eat a healthy and balanced diet.

If you’re interested in discussing pregnancy with other pregnant women, and hip moms of all ages, check out the PregnancyGroup.org.

Moderate Caffeine OK During Pregnancy

by DP Nguyen Leave a Comment

Last week, when I wrote about the Foods to Avoid During Pregnancy, I mentioned that you should probably give up your morning cup of coffee – just to be on the safe side. Excessive amounts of coffee (caffeine) has been linked to increasing your risk of having a miscarriage and delivering a premature baby.

If you’re a regular coffee lover, you’ll be happy to learn that earlier this summer, on July, 21, 2010, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) released a new position statement on caffeine consumption during pregnancy. The official recommendation is that moderate amounts of caffeine every day is perfectly fine for the mom-to-be.

“For years, women have been getting mixed messages about whether or not they should have any caffeine during pregnancy. After a review of the scientific evidence to date, daily moderate caffeine consumption doesn’t appear to have any major impact in causing miscarriage or preterm birth,” said Dr. William H. Barth, Jr., MD, chair of the Committee on Obstetric Practice in the official press release.

In a nutshell, don’t stress out about drinking that cup of coffee, having your favorite soft drink, or indulging yourself with that delicious bar of dark chocolate. But don’t overdo it with the caffeine-laced foods and drinks. Too much caffeine can still cause harm to your baby.

“Moderate caffeine consumption” is defined as less than 200 milligrams of caffeine a day, which means only about 12 ounces of coffee a day. To help you put this measurement in perspective, an 8-ounce cup of brewed drip coffee is about 137 milligrams of caffeine, while an 8-ounce cup of instant coffee only contains 76 milligrams.

Caffeinated tea and regular soft drinks typically contain less than 50 milligrams of caffeine, and the average chocolate candy bar contains less than 35 milligrams. Staying within your daily caffeine limit should be pretty simple.

Remember to anything in moderation will be OK and won’t harm your baby. But the key word is “moderation.”

Learn more:
Early Pregnancy Loss: Miscarriage and Molar Pregnancy (ACOG)