Women face postpartum baby blues which usually lasts for four to ten days.The women in the postpartum depression tend to face mood swings, tearfulness, irritability, anxiety, eating disorders and sleeping problems. Some of the patients suffer from postpartum major depression that is due to a history of depression in the family.



Postpartum depression is the most common and it is similar to the women who are not pregnant. The depression in pregnant women usually begins in the third trimester. The postpartum depression is prevalent in women with who have a history of PMDD during pregnancy, if women face some negative events during pregnancy, inadequate social support and may be due to marital problems.

The effect of Antidepressant during Pregnancy

There are both pharmacologic and non pharmacologic techniques that are prescribed for the treatment of postpartum major depression. The risk of undergoing depression is more among women in their child bearing age and is high between the ages 25 through 44 years old.

Doctors were previously reluctant to treat the major depression with drugs in pregnant women due to some safety concerns during pregnancy. Studies some doctors showed that some drugs resulted in intrauterine fetal death, physical malformations, growth impairment, behavioral abnormalities and neonatal toxicity.

But a few antidepressants like the tricyclic antidepressants, fluoxetine and newer selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors did not cause any risk of the intrauterine fetal death or any major birth defects. The findings show that the intake of the tricyclic antidepressant did not affect the risk for growth impairment.

Major depression causes women to lose weight so the doctors should check the weight gain of the mother who are taking these antidepressants. There are some antidepressant called the MAOI's are supposed to be cause birth defects. There are recent findings that women who have taken the antidepressant known as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may have a higher risk of a premature delivery but they do not have any type of birth defects or malformations.

Conclusion

The research shows that the women who take antidepressant during pregnancy were prone to give birth prematurely than the women who did not take any antidepressant during pregnancy to treat depression. A woman who has a severe depression problem should continue taking this antidepressant even during pregnancy. But the women facing mild depression should avoid them during pregnancy.