Can a woman with AD/HD take stimulant medication while pregnant?
With more and more women being diagnosed and treated for AD/HD, the question of safe use of stimulant medications during pregnancy has become more critical. In general, stimulants (either the amphetamines like Adderall or methyphenidate like Concerta, Ritalin LA and Metadate CD) are all considered “Category C” teratogens. That means that they should only be used when the risk to the mother outweighs the risk to the fetus. 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.
