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Is Any Alcohol Safe During Pregnancy? No amount of alcohol is safe during any trimester of pregnancy, whether that is wine, beer, or spirits. If a pregnant person consumes a drink with alcohol, it passes through to the fetus just like any other liquids or foods consumed. Some people mistakenly believe that it’s OK to […]

Pregnancy and Opioid Abuse It has been estimated that maternal opioid overdose rates have grown dramatically from 1996 to 2014, showing a 4-fold increase during that time. Approximately 6.5 of every 1,000 births involve a mother with an opioid use disorder.1 This trend of opioid use among pregnant women is distressing for many reasons. Opioid […]

What Is Heroin? A Brief Overview of Heroin Heroin is an opioid made from morphine, an opiate alkaloid extracted from the opium poppy.2 Heroin is a Schedule I controlled substance, which means that it has a high risk for abuse and is not approved for medical use.3 The adverse effects of heroin use can pose […]

While many factors (such as a person’s environment, their social support system, and whether they use other substances in conjunction with cocaine) play a role in the potential effects of drug use on a mother and her unborn baby, fetal exposure to cocaine is associated with serious health issues, including several types of developmental and […]

But there are pregnant individuals who struggle with substance misuse. Research suggests that about 5% of individuals use one or more addictive substances during their pregnancy.2 Additionally, in a 2022 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers found that 14% (or 1 in 7) of pregnant individuals surveyed […]

Pregnancy can be a wondrous time of life—a time when women become more focused on their own health to support the health of their unborn baby. They may start to become more conscious of what they’re putting into their bodies and how that may affect the child they’re carrying. However, if the mother is addicted […]

Xanax — a brand name for alprazolam — is a prescription benzodiazepine that works by calming central nervous system impulses. As neurotransmitters fire off in the brain, they cause emotional and behavioral reactions. When levels of certain neurotransmitters known as GABA are too low, they can cause mood disturbances. Increasing those levels often works to […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration places Ativan in Category D, which means that the drug has the potential to cause birth defects and health problems in developing babies, but that the drug might be required for some women with serious medical problems. Women with severe anxiety that cannot be treated with other medications, for […]