Are medicines and ultrasound safe in pregnancy?
Q: I am a 30 years old woman married for the last 2 years. I was having problems in conceiving. My HSG and sonography were done and everything was found to be normal. My husband's semen report was also normal and the washed sperm count was 30 million. After that my doctor advised IUI and I tried it and got pregnant. When the pregnancy was confirmed, the doctor started Profassi 2000 (biweekly) and Utrogestton 200mg (twice a day) for 10 weeks. Is it good to take these medicines? She has done my sonography at 5 weeks of pregnancy and the report is normal. Now I am 10 weeks pregnant and she wants to do a sonography again. Is it ok to do it at this stage of pregnancy? Please help me as this is a very precious pregnancy. What precautions should I take?
A:Well if all reports were normal, obviously you would conceive on your own. Whatever reason was given to you to do an IUI is not clear to me, anyway now that you have conceived your pregnancy is as normal as any in the world. You say your pregnancy is very precious, well I have been an obstetrician for almost 20 years and have not seen a single pregnancy which is not precious! Well all pregnancies are precious to the family and their doctors. Just because you did a procedure like IUI does not change the situation. Ultimately, one egg and one sperm is all that is required to make a baby and if these are normal, the baby formed is normal. Indeed there are problems like early pregnancy failure (abortion) and bleeding and pain and other symptoms which are not harmful to the baby like nausea, vomiting, cramps in the legs, lethargy, backache, palpitations and breathlessness which is distressing and bothersome but not harmful to the baby. Your chances of having none or all of them is exactly the same as any other woman who conceived naturally (and not by IUI). The way you put it you seem to be living in an eternal fear that something may or indeed will go wrong with your baby. Just because you have more fear than others does not mean you need more treatment (in form of potentially harmful hormones like HCG injections and Progesterone) or need useless ultrasounds (which are known to be less harmful than hormones but not totally safe!). Well I am not surprised that you are getting treatment which is not proven to be useful and has potential serious side effects. Fear of some thing going wrong has made you seek more treatment to prevent these unknown eventualities. You seem to believe that by taking enough medicines and all precautions you will ensure a perfect pregnancy. Pregnancy is not a disease that requires treatment. It is a normal physiological function of the body like respiration, digestion or locomotion. The fact that you found a doctor who was willing to give all these medicines you mentioned is common practice in our country. Where there is no regulation of the profession and the drug companies pushing these expensive hormones all the time, they are prescribed often. Please believe that you have a normal pregnancy and it will continue normally. There are no medicines to ensure this and no precautions are required. Ultrasounds and all other tests would be done based on scientific proven treatment protocols and not according to your fears. The job of the doctors is to help you overcome fear and anxiety and not increase it by giving lots of drugs/hormones precautions or doing more tests. To fight your fear of pregnancy you should read about it on the net in these days of the Internet. Fortunately information is available for anyone who seeks it and I am sure you will feel more confident about your pregnancy. The only way you fight fear is with power and the power of knowledge is most effective for this. Please go to the official website of the royal college of obstetricians and gynaecologists at www.rcog.org.uk and read about - antenatal care in a healthy pregnant women in the folder marked advice for patients. Just go to this site and look at Information for Patients, then open the link - College-produced patient information and then the folder Antenatal Care: routine care for the healthy pregnant woman (Information for pregnant women, their families and the public) If you want to read in details read the folder on Antenatal care (for physicians) these give the most authentic recent guidelines on what all should be done at each stage in pregnancy. At this stage you require only folvite one mg daily and NO OTHER MEDICINES. You can get an ultrasound done between 11 and 13 weeks to look at the nucheal fold to exclude Downs syndrome - this is a special ultrasound and not all ultrasound doctors know how to do this. The treatment for fear of pregnancy complications is information and not more medicines. Please educate yourself and you will start enjoy your pregnancy!
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