Atenolol use before pregnancy

[dawn71]

Hello,

I have a delimma and am hoping someone could help me on this. I had a severe case of SVT in Feb'08 and was prescribed Atenolol 25 mg each day. I was taking Atenolol when I realised I was pregnant, the 1s day of my last period was 2nd March'08. I stopped taking Atenolol on 4th April.

My doctor is advising me to go for a termination of pregnancy as this medicine could have serious effects on the foetus. But I don't want to do that as I feel the actual exposure to foetus is really very small to worry about.

Any advise is appreciated.

Thanks,

[Tanker Chic]

That doesn't make any sense to me because I take atenolol occassionally for situational anxiety and my dr (OB/GYN) told me I could continue to take it while I was pg. I never did, but she told me I could.  

After I wrote the above statement, I googled it and it does say not to take during early pg.  This is what it said:

Avoid Atenolol
Use of the cardioselective ß-blocker atenolol early in pregnancy in women with chronic hypertension has been shown to result in significantly lower birthweights compared with placebo and other antihypertensive agents.[9,10] The results of these and other studies indicate that treatment with atenolol is associated with fetal growth impairment and that this effect is related to duration of therapy.[9-11] Thus, atenolol should be avoided in early pregnancy and used only with caution in later pregnancy;[1] some advise avoidance of atenolol altogether in pregnancy.[2]"

Maybe they could confirm with ultrasound whether or not your fetus is the write size?  I'm not sure.... I would get a second opinion for sure.  

Maybe my dr told me I could take it becasue I was further along.