because I would like to have a baby. Good enough?
Sorry, jar I wasn’t asking for you to justify your desire to me… Good luck.
jar
You really have to keep this risk in perspective. Take a look at that link I posted. You’ll see that there are only a handful of drugs that are known to be a potential risk. For the vast majority of drugs, there is no known risk. However, doctors sometimes advise caution because there haven’t been enough peer-reviewed, double-blind studies involving controlled populations of pregnant women. This has more to do with fear of litigation than it does actual risk.
If you have a good medical reason to take a drug with no known risk, then do it. If you haven’t got a good reason, then don’t. This means – Stop drinking. It also means – Take the medicine for your back. While it is true that there is no great risk of conceiving a child with birth defects while you are immobilized in agonizing pain, I don’t think this is quite what you had in mind.
Glad to hear that the hub is in on this, jarbaby. 
Anyway, it’s normal for you to be nervous about this, but don’t go poking around on the Interent hoping to find factual information. You’ll run the whole gamut of mothers-to-be who are gung-ho on their “no drugs for ANYTHING” stance to pseudo-medical professionals that are convinced that the drugs you’re taking are 100% OK for a developing baby. Like other posters have said, medical science can’t be completely sure about a lot of medications, because they can’t really force pills down expectant mothers’ throats!
So rely on your doctors for the best information, chill out with your hub, and eat well while you’re trying to conceive.
- tsarina, who heard of a recent study that moderate alcohol consumption can actually increase the rate of conception, presumably because it relaxes everyone involved (sorry, cite not in front of me right now)
There is quite a large amount of resources on Fetal alcohol syndrome/effect. This is a good site: www.nofas.org
Most books and sites state that there is no known safe amount of alcohol for pregnancy. In NZ there is currently a TV ad campaign to stop alcohol consumption whilst pregnant. A women in one of the ads says that it only took one glass of wine - she has two children who are normal but one has FAS. She never binge drank.
According the one of the sites and the documentary aired recently, doctors are not up to speed on this and regularly tell patients that some alcohol is okay.
This latest campaign is probably because NZ currently has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the developed world and teenagers tend to binge drink!
[[So the question is…at what point do I sacrifice my own health and comfort for that of a ‘supposed’ fetus…considering I haven’t even missed a period. Do I stop taking the back pills all together? If I didn’t take two Vicodin yesterday I would have been imobile. I have two slipped discs that hurt like a bitch. Should I stop taking anti-depressants? We all know what insanity that would be. I mean, some of these posts have said that damage to ONE cell in the first weeks can wreak havoc. I was around two people who smoke on Monday evening. ]]
Everybody has anecdotes and can tell you what they’ve read or heard. But these really are questions that need to be answered by your medical provider - not by people on an internet message board. Your medical provider knows you and your situation, sees you in his or her office and can run tests, etc. The broadest advice anyone here can give you at this point is to assume you are pregnant and take the normal precautions that a pregnant person would take.
Yea, my wife had a similar go around with her epilepsy medication. She could not get the same answer from more than one person regarding her phenobarbitol. Some doctors wanted her to switch medications, others said it was the safest to be on. Anyway, things turned out fine, despite worries. For some odd reason they made her swictch from allegra to claritin (not covered by insurance) though.
What I want to know is how is jarbabyj’s going to be refered to on the boards - jarbabyjbaby?