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Comment by protonbob | Hacker News Reader

Yeah my wife is also pregnant and sometimes it is really tough on her but she doesn't use any medication other than baby aspirin for blood pressure. The alternative is exercise, anti-inflammatory foods, and also realizing that it isn't just your body anymore and you can't hurt somebody else's chances for a very small amount of pain relief.

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This is like saying "The risk of a traffic accident on the way to the hospital is unacceptable so I'll make her walk 12 miles to the hospital."

Walking 12 miles is not only uncomfortable, it is also higher risk to Mom and baby than driving.

You have to balance all the risks and benefits.

Right. And the benefits for tylenol are small.

But you aren't looking at the risks? Chronic pain can't be great for a pregnant woman and her developing fetus either, no?

What is the benefit of treating fever?

Fever during pregnancy can cause neural tube defects, congenital heart defects, orofacial clefts, miscarriage.

It's great that you care so much about the infinitesimal risks of acetaminophen. You should care 100x more about these risks that are 100x or 1000x greater.

And the risks are infinitesimally smaller.

Dude. That ignores one half of the analysis that we are discussing here.

> Yeah my wife is also pregnant and sometimes it is really tough on her but she doesn't use any medication other than baby aspirin for blood pressure. The alternative is exercise, anti-inflammatory foods, and also realizing that it isn't just your body anymore and you can't hurt somebody else's chances for a very small amount of pain relief.

It very much is still your wife's body - what other sentient entity is available for consultation?

I also am not sure if she is seeking professional medical advice - 'baby aspirin' is not a blood pressure medication, full stop. If this is based on non-medical doctor advice, please do consult a fully-qualified obstetrician.

Edit, just because this is very worrying to me, for later viewers, aspirin is an NSAID and its use should be weighed similar to that of other NSAIDs in the context of pregnancy. Consider this web page:

https://www.fda.gov/safety/medical-product-safety-informatio...

This is doctor prescribed. It is an extremely low dose. https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-op...

You may not know this, but pre-eclampsia is not a synonym for hypertension. Instead, hypertension is a manifestation of preeclampsia.

The baby aspirin is not for hypertension (it does nothing for hypertension). Its goal is to prevent changes in placental vasculature that may lead to severe pre-eclampsia in those already at risk for pre-eclampsia. One clinical sign that demonstrates risk for pre-eclampsia is high blood pressure.

Did that doctor prescribe it to your wife? If not, you’re missing the point of the parent comment and that would be incredibly concerning.

Yes a doctor prescribed it to my wife.

> what other sentient entity is available for consultation?

Surely you don't mean what you imply there? Not being sentient or available for consultation don't justify harming a person. A mother absolutely has a moral responsibility not to cause lifelong harm to the sentient entity her baby will later become. You wouldn't say excess alcohol consumption during pregnancy is only up to the mother's decision about her own body when there are adults walking around with terrible lives because of fetal alcohol syndrome.

> You wouldn't say excess alcohol consumption during pregnancy is only up to the mother

That's absolutely the case, though, isn't it? I wasn't aware of any laws that bar pregnant women from buying or consuming alcohol. So it's totally up to them.

>You wouldn't say excess alcohol consumption during pregnancy is only up to the mother's decision about her own body when there are adults walking around with terrible lives because of fetal alcohol syndrome.

I would - because the alternative means we are locking up current human beings to act as incubators for potential, future humans

Wow, that's a pretty extreme view. They're locking themselves up voluntarily and also locking their baby up. The baby is helpless but not the mother. If she didn't want to and somehow still recklessly got pregnant, she could always get an abortion which may be just a pill from the pharmacy once she missed a period, or more involved if slower. It's a deliberate choice to be responsible for somebody else's life.

It's to reduce the risk of preeclampsia.

Being miserable and in pain is also bad for the baby fwiw

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