Skeptical

I have gotten to be a psycho skeptic when it comes to reports about antidepressant use during the prenatal and postnatal periods.

Earlier this week I received a BabyCenter email newsletter, and there was a Reuters news blurb about antidepressant usage during pregnancy being associated with "preterm birth." Oh no, the worry button had been pushed upon reading the headline.

As I read through the brief report, it said women who had taken antidepressants for at least 50% of their pregnancies had an increase in preterm birth. Preterm birth was defined for the AD users as 38.5 weeks (as compared to 39.4 and 39.7 weeks in the other groups of women).

Ummm, maybe I have misread the pregnancy books, but isn't 37 weeks considered full-term? So women who took ADs were pregnant a week and a half longer than full-term if my math is accurate.

I know LOTS of women who have been induced or have undergone c-sections between 38-39 weeks of pregnancy, but they aren't considered as having their babies pre-term, so why is there a difference for women on ADs? I don't pretend to know.

Plus this study was conducted on 90 women. That ain't a whole lot of babies' mamas.

I guess what bugs me is that the headline makes it seem critical, urgent, terrifying. Every pregnant woman worries about delivering her baby pre-term, and this is especially true of a woman taking any kind of Rx medication. To read that ADs usage puts one at higher risk for premature delivery is frightening, but then when I realize that, at least according to this study, the pre-term labeling is erroneous, it just makes me mad.