EXCLUSIVE: GOP Rep. Diana Harshbarger Introduces Pregnancy Resource Website Bill
'No mother should ever have to feel alone'
A systematic review published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics concluded with moderate confidence on the basis of 51 studies with over 21.1 million participants that cannabis use during pregnancy can result in early births, low birth weights, and unusually small babies. The review also indicated significantly increased odds of miscarriages.
The study's authors, all but one of whom are based out of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, noted at the outset that the self-reported use of medical and nonmedical marijuana among pregnant women in the U.S. has more than doubled over the past two decades and continues to increase, despite warnings from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology.
According to the ACOG's Committee on Obstetric Practice, "self-reported prevalence of marijuana use during pregnancy ranges from 2% to 5% in most studies but increases to 15–28% among young, urban, socioeconomically disadvantaged women."
The OHSU researchers behind the new study noted further that marijuana is now reportedly the most commonly used federally illicit drug in pregnancy.
"This is cause for concern," wrote the researchers, because the main psychoactive component of cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol, can cross the placenta and bind to endocannabinoid receptors on preborn babies' major organs.
The existing scientific literature already associates maternal marijuana use with numerous dire consequences, including stillbirth and fetal growth restriction as well as impaired cognition, decreased attention span, behavioral problems, and compromised visual-motor coordination in prenatally exposed children.
The researchers noted, however, that "clinicians are not consistently counseling patients regarding prenatal cannabis use, partly because of the limited and mixed available evidence."
'Ideally, it's best not to be exposed to THC.'
"Patients are coming to me in their prenatal visits saying, 'I quit smoking and drinking, but is it safe to still use cannabis?'" said lead author Jamie Lo, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the OHSU School of Medicine. "Until direct harms have been proven, they perceive it to be safe to use."
"As the prevalence of prenatal cannabis use is rising, there is an urgent need for evidence-driven recommendations on the safety of use during pregnancy and while breastfeeding," Lo said in March.
Keen to furnish clinicians with a better understanding of the associated risks so that they can confidently counsel mothers regarding prenatal cannabis use, the researchers analyzed 51 observational studies including eight new studies, and raised the certainty of evidence for various potential adverse effects.
The researchers found that prenatal cannabis was linked to a 52% higher risk of premature birth and a 75% higher risk of low birth weight. They also found a 29% higher risk of infant death associated with the use of cannabis during pregnancy.
OHSU researchers revealed in another study recently published in the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology that a mother's use of cannabis while pregnant could adversely impact her baby's lung development and function, potentially resulting in asthma and other chronic respiratory health conditions.
In addition to jeopardizing the health of babies, marijuana has also been linked to various medical problems in adults, including cancer.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cannabis use can lead to increased risk of stroke, heart disease, and other vascular diseases; can harm lung tissues and cause scarring and damage to small blood vessels; and has been linked to depression, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses.
Lo told CNN, "Ideally, it's best not to be exposed to THC, which is the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis, no matter what form you're using."
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My wife and I were in Italy when we found out she was pregnant with our first. We were so happy.
Then the nausea came. And it was bad. Real bad. It turns out my wife experiences something called hyperemesis gravidarum during her first trimester.
I remember standing in the bedroom telling her in quite forceful language, 'You have to eat. There is no other option. You need to eat to survive.'
Basically it’s extraordinarily terrible morning sickness. We didn’t know it was a thing at the time. It was only years later and another kid later that we realized there was a name for it and that what she experiences isn’t just normal morning sickness.
The technical jargon doesn’t really matter, though. That there is some designated medical term to describe her grueling morning sickness isn’t really relevant to any of this. The point is that she gets it bad, real bad. And we had no idea what we were in for when we found out we were going to be parents.
It was February. We were staying at an Airbnb in a small town named Loiano about 40 kilometers from Bologna. We were there for three weeks. Every day I would walk to the little grocery store in search of anything my wife could stomach. She felt like she was going to vomit constantly. All day, all night. That’s how it is for her during the first trimester. All she wanted was a bagel, but there are no bagels in Loiano. The closest bagel was probably somewhere in Paris.
I walked to the pharmacy a couple of times to try to get her some medicine to alleviate the sickness. Pitifully fighting through the Italian language, I tried to communicate to the pharmacist what we needed. He gave me some stuff a couple of times, but it never seemed to work for my wife.
She didn’t want to eat at all. I remember standing in the bedroom telling her in quite forceful language, “You have to eat. There is no other option. You need to eat to survive.”
She didn’t leave the Airbnb for 10 days. My job was basically running around town trying to find food she could eat, medicine that might make her feel better, returning the rental car to Bologna, working, cleaning, and trying to figure out some way to make her anything other than miserable.
Everything was melting down. I remember one night her telling me that she didn’t know if she could handle a plane ride because she felt so terrible. We sat there trying to brainstorm any kind of solution. “How are we going to get back home?”
I think about that trip a lot. It was a turning point in our relationship. It was the last trip we took as people without kids and the first trip we took as people with kids. It was the first time we had to really work together in a different, more adult kind of way.
We had to solve these problems together in a way that we never had to before. It was the first time I really saw her in a bad state. Really worried. Really just not herself.
It was our first introduction into what your life is like as a parent. You are part of a team in a way you never were before. You’ve got to get the job done, and your feelings matter less than they used to.
We have different feelings about that time. My wife hates thinking about Loiano. When I dare utter the name, she winces in pain. All she remembers is being sick. I have different memories. It was hard, of course. I was busy doing everything I could on my end to try to help her while also getting my work done. Someone needs to pay the bills. But I wasn’t suffering like she was.
I have fond memories of walking in town to get more groceries in hopes of finding something she could stomach. The low winter sun. Long shadows. The brown grass and bare branches. The quiet streets in this small Italian town.
Standing on the balcony at 2:30 a.m. after I had finally finished my work, drinking bourbon, watching the lights of a car heading down the small country road far in the distance. The big, bright moon overhead.
That was six years ago. I’ve grown a lot since then. I feel like a different person in a lot of ways, because I kind of am. I said that time was hard, but it wasn’t really. It only felt hard because I was pretty weak. I wasn’t used to solving real problems. Now, after having a couple of kids and managing a lot worse stuff, Loiano would be child’s play for us.
But we can’t go back and live life again with the knowledge we have today. To look back and see our past worries as simple or our old stress as quaint is a good thing. It’s a blessing to remember and realize that we were different then from what we are today. We’ve grown, learned, lived, and aged. What wonderful gifts those are.