The efffects of drugs when making a baby.

Pighead

Good morning all. Quick question for the medical minds to answer for Pighead.

Was having a discussion re drugs last night with Miss Piggy and she had a bee in her bonnet about people who take drugs and the effects it has on their babies. Lets say Joan and David are making sweet passionate love and a baby is conceived. Joan doesn't take drugs but David occasionally takes Cocaine, Ecstasy and maybe Cannabis.

Would Davids drug taking make his sperm toxic and therefore increase the chances of damage to the baby or are the effects of drugs in his system negligible? Cheers men and ladies.

jim o doom

I'm unsure about cannabis - but with stronger drugs like cocaine, AFAIK it doesn't affect the baby unless you are actually on it, or it's within a couple of days of taking it, because most drugs are out of your system pretty damn quickly - unlike cannabis which remains in your fat and is slowly released into the blood over time if you quit.. (thank god).

The above is all opinion - I have about as many medical degrees as the average dead worm infested kangeroo.

Pighead

jim o doom wrote: »

I'm unsure about cannabis - but with stronger drugs like cocaine, AFAIK it doesn't affect the baby unless you are actually on it, or it's within a couple of days of taking it, because most drugs are out of your system pretty damn quickly - unlike cannabis which remains in your fat and is slowly released into the blood over time if you quit.. (thank god).

The above is all opinion - I have about as many medical degrees as the average dead worm infested kangeroo.

Ha ha, good man jim. Thanks for the post. I'd imagine with something like Ecstacy there'd be a case for saying it affects the baby as there are ongoing studies to find out what long term effects that drug has had on it's users. Like you though, Pighead's only guessing.

jim o doom

Pighead wrote: »

Ha ha, good man jim. Thanks for the post. I'd imagine with something like Ecstacy there'd be a case for saying it affects the baby as there are ongoing studies to find out what long term effects that drug has had on it's users. Like you though, Pighead's only guessing.

I "think" that if they do anything long term bogey to the user, it might damage the motility of the wee spermys (and does god knows what to the users brains - I don't want to know!)..

but other than that I'd be like abou 65% confident that once it's "out" of your system (like a week or two after, or less if you drink loads of water to flush yourself clean) & the actual chemicals arn't in your system, it shouldn't affect baby production; because it would have to alter your DNA which is the content of your sperm, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't do that.. but it could well damage sperm motility.

*thanks god for having no intention to ever reproduce*

anotherlostie

I'd be more concerned about the ability to rear the resulting child whilst on the drugs.

CathyMoran

They are not about to run a scientific test to see if it is safe so in the end of the day you are probably better off not. Having said that, if you stuck to the list of what you are supposed to do pre and during pregnancy you would never leave your room at all.

I dont have a medical qualification (unless Genetics and food science counts), but was recently pregnant and asked EVERY question to my doctors.

There are some medicinal drugs that can damage sperm so you are playing russian roulette and who wants to do that with their child/children.

There are some lovely doctors in the maternity hospitals (espcially Holles Street) who will answer any query you have and they should be your first port of call.

jim o doom

anotherlostie wrote: »

I'd be more concerned about the ability to rear the resulting child whilst on the drugs.

Maybe a child is what a drug user needs to clear their habit? :pac::pac::pac:

DrIndy

Welcome pighead!

I was wondering when you would be visiting our forum!

Pighead

DrIndy wrote: »

Welcome pighead!

I was wondering when you would be visiting our forum!

Good morning DrIndy. Pighead will never forget you. You manned the "Free the Pig" campaign back in the dark days of my incarceration way back in 05. A legend amongst doctors!

Now answer my question damn it!

RobFowl

Pighead wrote: »

Good morning all. Quick question for the medical minds to answer for Pighead.

Was having a discussion re drugs last night with Miss Piggy and she had a bee in her bonnet about people who take drugs and the effects it has on their babies. Lets say Joan and David are making sweet passionate love and a baby is conceived. Joan doesn't take drugs but David occasionally takes Cocaine, Ecstasy and maybe Cannabis.

Would Davids drug taking make his sperm toxic and therefore increase the chances of damage to the baby or are the effects of drugs in his system negligible? Cheers men and ladies.

Good morning Pighead

Several illicit drugs are detrimental to male fertility and should be avoided, especially in men trying to establish a pregnancy.
Marijuana interferes with spermatogenesis by decreasing sperm density and motility and increasing the number with morphologic abnormalities.
Opiates lead to a decline in libido and erectile function. Opiates suppress the luteinizing hormone (LH) and luteinizing hormone releasing factor (LH-RH), leading to a decline in testosterone production. The pituitary gland itself may also be directly suppressed by opiates.
Cocaine impairs erectile function
Amphetamines including ecstasy have been shown to cause diminished libido.

Hope this helps answer your question

JuliusCaesar

smoking (legal) cigarettes also not good.......

tallaght01

It's an interesting question. When a kiddy is born with an abnormality, dads often wonder if they have had some role in this, by using illicit drugs in the past.

There's no really solid evidence that the fetus is impacted by paternal drug use, in terms of birth defects.

There is some provisional evidence that paternal drug use leads to a higher risk of miscarriage.

That may be due to the "all or nothing" blastocyst stage. This is often talked about in these terms as, if there's an insult to a blastocyst (very early days of the fetus...up to about 2 weeks) it will either 1) Die or 2) replace the damaged cells and carry on it's merry way.

But like RobFowl says, most of the problems associated with male drug use relate to the quality of the sperm, and fertility/libido issues.

There side issues like drug users having a higher prevalence of hepatitis/HIV. These can be passed onto the baby, and HIV infected mothers are more likely to have preterm babies, and septic babies, although the risk of passing HIV directly to the baby is low in developed countries.

Martly

There are certain conditions that babies can be born with that are known to be associated with recreational drug use, the main one that i know of is gastroschisis - where the digestive system forms outside the body, it can be corrected with surgery but, its very distressing for the parents to see and can leave the baby with digestive problems in life

tallaght01

But is drug use an independent risk factor? Or is it because drug abusing mums have low birth weight babies?

The case control study looking at this used hair samples to establish drug use retrospectively. Anyone know how reliable that is?

Pighead was wondering about paternal drug use, but I don't think there's good evidence to link that to gastroschisis (thought it correlates well with the incidence of maternal UTIs).