Drug and Alcohol Use: Making safe choices and seeking help
It is ideal to start making healthy lifestyle choices before you even know you're pregnant - when you are trying to conceive or doing nothing to avoid becoming pregnant. These lifestyle choices include stopping smoking and using other nicotine products, avoiding alcoholic beverages, stopping or getting treatment for drug addictions and being sure that prescription and over the counter medications that you use are safe for developing a pregnancy. And once you know you are pregnant, what you put in your body becomes even more vital. This program will share concerns about using prescription medications, drugs or alcohol during pregnancy and what you can do to help ensure a safe journey and outcome for you and your baby.
What Do You Know About Drugs and Alcohol in Pregnancy?
During pregnancy, is it OK to take an aspirin for that headache or a sleeping pill when you’re tossing and turning at night? Take this quiz to get the answers on different types of drugs and if they may have harmful effects on your unborn child.
Almost every drug passes from the mother's bloodstream through the placenta to the fetus. Drugs that cause dependence and addiction in the mother also cause the fetus to become addicted.
Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is a set of signs that can occur in a baby. It happens when a baby is exposed to drugs in the womb before birth. The baby then goes through drug withdrawal after birth.
