PREGNANCY AND MEDICATION

Diseases & Conditions Epilepsy
1
Hello.  This is my first time on this site.  I have been trying to find information on becoming pregnant and how this works with medication.  I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder last July.  I tried a few different meds and have continued with Lamictal.  After reading some of your stories I feel lucky for only having 1 seizure maybe every 6 months.  For those of you who have had children, were you concerned that there would be birth defects or if it would trigger seizures?  I have a two year old son and had no complications with him.  Is it safe for you and the baby, or is it taking too big of a risk for both of you?
 
Once I was diagnosed I tried to think back if I had any other seizures before.  I know this is going to sound crazy but the only times I could trace seizures to is when there was self inflicted pain (e.g. belly button pierced) or when there was sight of blood, which only happened once.  These happened over the course of maybe 6 years and I can recall maybe 4 possible seizures.  Has anyone experienced this? And for some reason the neuros I have seen cannot seem to tell me if I have epilepsy, does anyone know if this is considered epilepsy? My EEG was abnormal, but can a seizure disorder potentially get worse? 
 
2

Hi Km, welcome!  I have 3 children and took Tegretol with all 3 pregnancies.  I also breastfed and took Tegretol.  I'm not sure about Lamictal and pregnancy but each anti-convulsant has it's own set of risks of birth defects.  All 3 of my girls turned out 100% healthy and zero birht defects.  I must say that the whole time I was pregnant I was scared to death that something would happen to them because I continued to have sz's while I was pregnant.  Each one of my pregnancies I had an amniocentesis that confirmed that they were healthy and because of my history of sz's the ultrasound I had was done at a higher level.  When you're a high risk pregnancy, which you will be considered, you do have the advantage of an access to alot more testing.  My labor was induced so that they already had me hooked up to an iv in case I went into a sz during labor and they needed to administer meds.  Before you get pregnant start taking prenatal vitamins.  This will give you a head start on preventing birth defects.  This is especially important in the first month of your pregnancy when the brain and spine are developing.  Some anti-convulsant related birth defects are spine and brain defects.  It's also important that your neuro and ob work together.  Hope this helps.

Christine