Feb. 11, 2002 -- When I was four months pregnant, I developed s
Feb. 11, 2002 -- When I was four months pregnant, I developed severe stomach pains and was rushed to the hospital. Suspecting appendicitis, the emergency room doctors advised X-rays -- the only way to find out if their suspicions were correct. I panicked. After all, X-rays were on that ominous list of "don'ts" I had so fastidiously been avoiding throughout my pregnancy.
The doctors agreed to monitor me carefully and to hold off for an hour or so. In the meantime, they grew less convinced that my discomfort was appendicitis and more sure I merely had a case of the flu and dehydration. But what I hadn't fully understood was that a burst appendix was far more dangerous to me and my baby than any X-ray.
My misguided fears aren't uncommon. Experts say many women -- and even some doctors -- think some medications and exposures are more harmful to a pregnancy than they actually are. It's a good idea to avoid substances you don't need, they say, but you shouldn't feel compelled to be a martyr, either.
"I think there are great misperceptions out there," says Karen Filkins, MD, director of reproductive genetics at the UCLA School of Medicine, who ran a pregnancy hotline in Pittsburgh for 12 years and fielded thousands of calls from pregnant women who were unduly worried about exposing their babies to everything from mouthwash to Ex-Lax.
Citing a variety of conditions from asthma to the common cold, Filkins says medications can often ensure safer pregnancies than if illnesses are left untreated. "In fact, the worst thing you can do is go cold turkey and stay sick. Fever, for instance, has more potentially damaging effects early in pregnancy than taking something like Tylenol."
