Pregnancy and Zonisamide?

[Pumpkinpie2014]

I’m currently 5 weeks pregnant, and I’ve been on Zonisamide/zonegran for the past 7 years..

I know it’s not the most heard of medication durning pregnancy, but the others really don’t work for me at all!

so my question is, has anyone ever been medicated on Zonisamide throughout their pregnancy and still had a healthy pregnancy and baby?

im on a pretty low dose and also taking high dose of folic acid!!

thank you ❤️

You should be under consultant led care and offered additional growth scans due to the risk. If you want to breastfeed, you’ll have to stop taking it.

@BrownSharpie yes but I was asking if anyone had experience with being on the medication and pregnancy.

It's always hard to take medications in pregnancy. I take medication for my mental health in pregnancy and it's a medication that's not super common to take. It comes down to the combination of risks - the harm of being healthy and medicated Vs being unhealthy and unmedicated.

I don't have the experience of this drug but I have had two pregnancies whilst on medication that can cause a few issues in the first few days after birth. Withy first I spent 3 days on the ward on the neonatal medication withdrawal plan. Every 4h they came to check on her. They took her temperature, O2 sats and did a few other observations and gave her a score based on these observations. She passed every one we got to go home after 72h. I had my second in September, we had a couple of issues immediately after birth with his blood sugars but it's unclear whether this was the medication or because he was born at 37+1, I was called in for induction at 36+6 so he was born on the late preterm/early term border. As he wasn't maintaining his blood sugars he wasn't able to wake to feed and bring up his blood sugars. For the first 24h we were having to give formula and colostrum by syringe every 4h. He was sleeping for 12h at a time. They monitor his blood sugars before feeds for another 12h and they were ok. We went home when he was 48h old with a list of symptoms to watch out for and what was the appropriate response to them - ie. 999 for this symptom, call triage for this symptom, call your community midwife for this symptom. They said they didn't need to keep me in for 72h like last time as it is usually either in the first 24h or after 72h that symptoms are seen with this medication so as his blood sugars were now ok there was no benefit for staying another day and that after that we would be at home anyway. He was fine but we did get the full 28 days of midwife care rather than the more usual 10-14 days.

My health is subject to declining with disruptive sleep so post birth I was prioritised for a private room rather than a bay. I had a couple of admissions in pregnancy for extreme fatigue and obstetric Cholestasis. I was on a bay for this but my symptoms meant sleep wasn't an issue. If poor sleep would disrupt your health it might be something to ask about. Along side the support that they can give you post partum - for example the extended midwife care afterwards and keeping with a named midwife, aside from the 5 day check, I saw my practice midwife for all our post natal appointments.

They are highly unlikely to have your medication on the ward so I would keep 2-3 days worth on you at all times. I was in triage unexpectedly one evening from 3 in the afternoon until around midnight when they then decided to admit me and I didn't have my meds on me. I found an emergency dose I kept in my car of my medication and my partner brought the rest in for me the next day.