Antibiotics During Pregnancy

A pregnant woman is extra careful about what she eats and drinks, as she is aware that everything ingested by her body is going to reach her growing unborn baby.

No wonder she is extra cautious when it comes to taking over the counter medicines or even other prescribed medicines. Doctors too are wary about prescribing any extra medicines to her.

Pregnancy makes the body more susceptible to infections, which need to be treated properly. In such cases, one may need to take antibiotics during pregnancy. The question arises: are antibiotics safe during pregnancy?

Antibiotics may be essential during pregnancy, but one needs to be extra careful about what antibiotics are safe during the various stages of pregnancy. As a rule, a woman should avoid most medications during the first eight weeks of her pregnancy, as the fetus is still in its formative stages and any harm done at this stage is irreversible.

Certain antibiotics may prove to be more harmful during the later stages. Whatever be the need, pregnant women should not take antibiotics without consulting their doctor.

Certain antibiotics like erythromycin, amoxicillin, clindamycin, penicillin and ampicillin are considered safe. These antibiotics are commonly prescribed during pregnancy to tackle various infections.

A group of antibiotics considered particularly unsafe and avoided by doctors are the tetracyclines, which can damage the pregnant women’s lever and cause permanent discoloration of the unborn baby’s teeth. Furthermore, antibiotics like sulfonamides and nitrofuran have been associated with birth defects and should be avoided.

Antibiotics like septrin and trimethoprim are also under the scanner and are not favored by doctors. They prefer alternative antibiotics for pregnant women. A few more antibiotics that are so far away from the scanner are cefadroxil, cefaclor, cefalexin, cefotaxime, cefuroxime and cephradine. These belong to the cephalosporin group and are among antibiotics prescribed during pregnancy.

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