Accidentally had cough syrup while pregnant

[Ymrmon]

Hi everyone,

I found out I was pregnant 3 weeks ago and I’ve just started my 9th week. I’m having a hard time with anxiety and feeling responsible for how the baby turns out. When I found out I was pregnant while on vacation, I had a bad cough, so I went to pharmacies and asked for cough syrup safe for pregnancy. I took what was recommended, but it was not safe for pregnancy. I came back home and still had the cough, so I asked my gynecologist for a safe cough syrup and took it for maybe 3 days. Yesterday I happened to look up the cough syrup online and it has a substance that shouldn’t be ingested while pregnant. I’m so worried that I’ve done harm to the baby since I’m still in my first trimester. I’d appreciate any advice and tips to quiet my worries.

You’ll be fine. Speak to your midwife if the anxiety is causing you issues.

You asked the correct professionals for advice and will be fine. Stay away from the internet.

Loads of stuff is warned against during pregnancy simply as a precautionary measure as there will have been no clinical trials undertaken. I am sure it will be fine, but you did everything right in speaking to the mk ost knowledgeable professionals. I would speak to your midwife and look to get help with anxiety. A pregnancy is the start of a journey about growing a baby, but you will continue to worry forever, I worry about my teens and my mum worries about me!!!!! It's never ending 😭

It’s hugely unethical to test medicines on pregnant women, with one result being that pretty much none of them are officially declared safe in pregnancy. If a pharmacist told you it’s fine, it’s fine.

Thank you for your replies. I will look into midwives in the area and work on my anxiety!

Honestly you'll be fine, they can't test medicines on pregnant people so that's why they just are cautious and say don't have it. Anything over the counter is so weak really.

Emily Oster book Expecting Better might be interesting for you, OP. Goes through the advice given to pregnant women and looks at the evidence backing them up.

Very often, as PP said, it would be unethical to do a study where some women were given something to see if it harmed their babies. So there's no evidence. Rather than risk being sued because something isn't proven safe, or because regulators won't let them without that evidence, companies just slap a not suitable for pregnant women sign on it. To be on the safe side and because pregnant women are a tiny market so the risk of selling to them is not worth it.

Where something has evidence that women who are pregnant shouldn't take it, that doesn't mean a single sip/nibble or whatever will immediately do harm to your baby. It's about risk. Some women might make an informed choice that, for example, a medication is worth taking during pregnancy even if there's a 1% higher risk of the baby having allergies or something - because not taking the medication would be worse.

There are all kinds of rules like not having deli meats - other countries don't ban them. Our authorities have looked at evidence and decide there's a risk so they're banned. Risk isn't absolute, it might be 0.2% risk of harm or 80% risk of harm.