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What real evidence do you guys have either way about using only marijuana during pregnancy? There are tons of people who have smoked throughout their pregnancy and their kids have been brilliant and delightful.

All I can find is problems with pregnancy when the mother used multiple drugs, or used drugs and didn't have any prenatal care. And I think there was some study when a bunch of pregnant laboratory rats were given gigantic doses and had higher infant mortality rates, but that's true for the antidepressants I was told it was better to stay on during my last pregnancy. One girl was having twins, smoked one hit one evening and both were dead the next day. I personally can't see how that's anything but unlucky coincidence, but she feels so guilty because she's afraid the pot caused it.

The reason I ask is because I was almost hospitalized during my last pregnancy because of so much morning sickness. I lost a lot of weight the first half of my pregnancy and the doctors were really concerned during my 4th month because of it. I was actually still throwing up every single day until the morning after my daughter was born. I smoked one hit of pot, one day only during that pregnancy and that worked for me while none of the prescriptions helped. And that day was the best day of my pregnancy just because the pot helped so much that I felt so much happier and was able to keep food and water down.

I just found out this weekend that I'm pregnant again (we've been trying for almost 2 years!) If I have the same trouble with this pregnancy I am tempted to use marijuana medically, daily if needed. I would only use enough to lessen the symptoms, not to get high though, and it might be a lesser evil if I don't have to be hospitalized.

Another worry is that I am prone to miscarriage (had 2 in a row and then almost lost my daughter to miscarriage as well). So I"m going to lay off the weed until morning sickness gets unbearable (if it ever does, *crosses fingers*)

What do you guys think? And if anyone has any links to information, or statistics or research, I would love to get it.

I know for a fact that marijuana use during pregnancy does cause birth defects. My fiancee's mother smoked marijuana, and he was born with a birth defect that caused his head to be attached to his shoulder. Although he did have corrective surgery, he still has some movement restriction with when turns his neck.

yeah vivnox. looking at your relatives pregnancies is a good way to see weird things that aren't actually harmful. like allour babies tend to be way underweight (not even close to 5%) and so my pediatrician isn't worried that my daughter is really light for her age. and a friend of mine says she never missed a period until she was 4 months pregnant, so she never knew until then. but that ran in her family too. no morning sickness, i'm jealous. soyy 'bout the lack of caps, my daughter's sleeping on my otherr arm

Its not the smoke, its the stuff other than THC that gets you high. Something interferes with the fetal development.

Frankly, I'd assume uncontrollable vomiting is far more hazardous to a pregnancy than smoking pot, especially if it doesn't take much to control your nausea.

Update on my pregnancy:

I started bleeding 3 weeks ago and got an ultrasound in which they told me that it was too early to tell anything except that the gestational sac was implanted in the uterus and it's size indicated that I conceived a week later than I was pretty sure I ovulated (I called my Creighton counselor to find out if I was predicting my ovulation wrong).

Over this weekend I started bleeding more and passing blood clots, so Monday I called my OB/GYN and asked if they could move my ultrasound up fromt Thursday to as soon as possible. They scheduled an emergency ultrasound that morning.

In the ultrasound, we saw that the gestational sac was still there, but there was no fetus inside the sac. They called it a "blighted ovum" and said that sometimes when the fertilized egg splits, it forms a sac and starts a placenta but for some reason it never starts growing a baby, so there never was a baby inside me, just the growing sac. They did their whole, "don't worry, it's not your fault, there is nothing you could have done, schpiel".

So I went home and told everyone I was definitely miscarrying and told them I no longer needed people to help me watch my daughter while I stayed on bed rest and pelvic rest.

Last night I started bleeding heavily after a bath, soaking 3 pads in an hour. They had said if you soak more than one in an hour come to the Emergency Room, so I did and they gave me a few bags of saline, and said my blood pressure was low but not life threatening. I said I didn't want a D & C and I didn't want the medication they wanted to give me for the pain, because the pain wasn't too bad. After about 4 hours, the doctor did a pelvic (OW!) and said I was still bleeding from the Os, but it wasn't a life threatening amount and I could go home if I wanted to.

Today I'm bleeding only a little, have no cramps, but I'm still kind of tired and weak.

We can try again after one healthy cycle passes.

As far as the marijuana issue is concerned, I did smoke one time to help relieve a killer anxiety attack that I believe was due to my fears about the pregnancy and about morning sickness. The two hits I took made the anxiety attack a little better, and though I was still having it I was able to fall asleep. Because it was a blighted ovum from the beginning, I'm pretty sure the two hits that one time didn't make a significant difference in any negative way.

Thank you for all your information. Most of the info I found on the net was inconclusive. The significant findings seemed small, and inconsistent between races, methods of ingestion, and some other weird things. The anecdotal data I got from individuals who's preganancies went fine and those who didn't gave me some idea of how much risk I might be taking. Hopefully I'll be able to post again this year that we are pregnant again.

Oh and the really good news is, now that I've had three miscarriages, my OB/GYN is willing to start tests to find out if I have low progesterone (which I suspect is the problem) or any other conditions which lend themselves to repeated miscarriage.

Thanks. I'm actually lucky. Most OB/GYNs wait until you've had 3 in a ronw. That would mean two more for me (I had two before and one after my 3 year old daughter). It's because the chances of having a miscarriage in any known pregnancy is like 1 in 5. So 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage when nothing is medically wrong with the man or woman. That means 4% of miscarriages will be right after another miscarriage. And it only becomes less than 1% when you have three in a row. According to my research and reading, 70% of women who have had 3 miscarriages in a row can have a baby with no medical intervention. So the three in a row rule is only finding something that needs to be fixed in 30% of the women. I think that the insurance companies want to wait that long so they don't spend as much money on so many tests that will show that nothing is wrong.

But it is frustrating for women. Most women want to know what might have gone wrong after their very first miscarriage. We are told "It wasn't your fault, there was nothing you could have done, it was probably just that the baby wouldn't have made it anyway so your body decided to let it go now..." which is perhaps comforting to the grief stricken woman, but not so much for the woman who wants to understand the possibilities and if there are things she can do to prevent another.

I checked out a good book from the library explaining about miscarriages and how to reduce your risk and that's the kind of thing that I've been wanting to learn about.

I am a gay woman and I would smoke while pregnant if needed to calm the effects of pregnancy. I wish you the best of luck with your next birth.