Asthma in pregnancy

This afternoon, as I washed my bike, I listened to Weekend Woman's Hour on Radio 4. The program discussed the use of drugs that control asthma during pregnancy, a subject of interest to us as Hayley has occasional mild asthma attacks and uses a ventolin inhaler to control them.

In summary the program said that drugs such as ventolin (taken when an attack occurs) and some preventive drugs were proven to be safe for use during pregnancy and that women should definitely continue to use them. To back this up they interviewed a woman who discontinued her use of a preventive drug during her first pregnancy without any problems, but had a very bad asthma attack during her second pregnancy which lead to her being admitted to hospital.

Hayley has only had to use her ventolin inhaler a couple of times during the pregnancy - usually when she's been around cats as she is allergic to them - and this is the only medication she uses. However, the onset of summer will inevitably bring hay fever which she suffers from severely and which triggers asthma attacks. The question of safe medications for that is yet to be considered.