Happy Birthday, Maidengurl!

indeed. HB, MG

The alcohol and the denial make a nice little loop. Each feeds the other.

Did I miss saying good-bye to Perkins? Drat. I was in a meeting with our 2nd candidate for a position here. He was blushy-boy; I lost count of how many times he turned red at something. It was adorable.

So jealous of your Laura (and family) visitage and vacation, Perkins. Have a great time and take pics and have a couple drinks for us. M'kay?

Loving Aimee's idea for the reply to C, Maidengurl. Perfect!

B-days!

I was in a meeting with our 2nd candidate for a position here. He was blushy-boy; I lost count of how many times he turned red at something.

Apparently university library work is a lot racier than he imagined, poor thing.

Apparently university library work is a lot racier than he imagined, poor thing.

Hasn't it always been suspected that we librarians are all about protecting the porn?

I'm going to make pancakes for dinner tonight.

Big fluffy pancakes.

When EM suffered post-partum depression and went on Prozac we stopped breast-feeding Emmett. We just felt like there wasn't enough information about how it would affect him.

There's new evidence now that taking ADs during pregnancy might be a problem. (Which, of course, is not the same thing as breastfeeding while on ADs, I realize, but I'd still be cautious.)

NYTimes article on ADs and pregnancy

Expectant mothers who took antidepressants like Prozac late in their pregnancy were significantly more likely to give birth to an infant with a rare but serious breathing problem, doctors are reporting today.

The lung disorder, called persistent pulmonary hypertension, strikes 1 to 2 newborns in 1,000, on average, and can be fatal. In babies exposed to antidepressants during the last few months of pregnancy, the study found, the rate was six times as high: 6 to 12 newborns in 1,000.

In a news conference yesterday, Dr. Sandra L. Kweder, an official at the Food and Drug Administration, which was not involved in the research, said that the study results were "very worrisome," and that the agency planned to search its own database of adverse events for further evidence of risk. She said the F.D.A. would consider whether to require manufacturers to make labeling changes and conduct postmarketing studies to clarify the risk.

The findings, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, are the latest in a series of reports that highlight the tough choices that face millions of women with depression who are pregnant or plan to be. Untreated maternal depression can also harm a developing fetus, experts say, and last week researchers reported in a study that 68 percent of pregnant women who quit taking antidepressants relapsed, compared with 26 percent of those who stayed on the drugs.

But studies have found that up to one-third of babies exposed to antidepressants in the womb suffer temporary withdrawal symptoms like agitation. The F.D.A. has warned that one popular depression drug, Paxil, from GlaxoSmithKline, may increase the risk of rare heart problems in newborns exposed to the medication in utero.

The complete NEJM article is here.

It's worth noting that the increased risk was minimal during the first half of pregnancy - babies whose moms took SSRIs through the first 20 weeks got PPHN at about the same rate as those whose moms took other or no ADs at all.

Also, even with the comparatively gigantic jump in risk for those taking SSRIs from 20-40 weeks, the researchers conclude in the closing paragraph that:

the absolute risk among those who use SSRIs late in pregnancy is relatively low (about 6 to 12 per 1000 women); to put it in other terms, about 99 percent of women exposed to one of these medications late in pregnancy will deliver an infant unaffected by PPHN.