Can a woman with AD/HD take stimulant medication while pregnant?

To date, the effects of stimulants during pregnancy have only been studied in animals, where defects were seen in the offspring when the mothers were given very high doses of the stimulants. The doses of stimulants given to animals for these studies have been 41x and 12x the usual human dose. The literature contains individual case reports of women who have taken stimulants during their pregnancy and, clinically, there have been many other women who have taken stimulants and have had normal babies.

The important questions for a woman who is being treated for AD/HD and who is thinking about getting pregnant or who recently learned that she is pregnant are the following:

• Should she discontinue stimulants prior to becoming pregnant?
• Should she continue stimulants after her first 3 months?
• Should she discontinue medication during the entire pregnancy?
• What are the risks both to the mother and the baby if her AD/HD goes untreated?

Each woman needs to decide the answers to these questions for herself after considering all of the available information and discussing the issue with both the child's father and her physician. The problems with the stimulants have to do with cardiac defects, which usually occur because of problems during the formation stages of each organ system during the first trimester. To date, there are no large-scale studies to provide us with answers.