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Skincare Safety During Pregnancy

Published 03.27.2008 | Permanent Link | Comments (7)

(So sorry for not getting this up yesterday, as was intended. Oops.)

Hi Amalah,

Here’s my situation. I am about 4 weeks pregnant – yep, we were trying so I and my impatient self took a test the day BEFORE my period was supposed to start and it was negative. But I just had a feeling, so the NEXT DAY I used a more expensive brand test and it was positive! Yay!

My question, though, is about safe skincare. My nature is not to be a freak-out case about things like caffeine, artificial sweeteners, and other things that have a tiny risk for pregnant women. When I was pregnant with my 3-yr-old son I cut back a little on caffeine, soft cheeses and cold cuts, and eliminated alchohol and sushi, but pretty much just lived life as usual. But I’ve had 3 unexplained miscarriages in the past year, so my new mindset is to be cautious – still drinking one cup of coffee a day but cutting all the other stuff completely. I’ve read about the tiny risks of retinol and salicylic acid in skin products. Until now I’ve been using Neutrogena Anti-Wrinkle moisturizer with retinol and sometimes their blackhead and wrinkle reducing scrub with salicylic acid. What do you recommend to replace these two products for my combination, pregnant, skin? And what do you think about the warnings in the first place?

I enjoy your writing here as well as amalah.com, zero to forty, and mamapop!

Thanks!

Val

Let me start off with my thoughts about the warnings in general: they aren't talking about the products you're using. The warnings are about the heavy-duty concentrated prescription-strength versions, and even then the warnings are a little vague and tend to fall into the "eh, better to be overly safe than sorry" category of pregnancy warnings. And as you know, this is a HUGE category.

I have VERY STRONG OPINIONS about how pregnant women are treated these days: we're somewhere between ultra-valuable and delicate Ming vases and complete hayseed dumbasses who can't be expected to understand concepts like "pasteurization" so they tell us just to avoid "soft cheese" even though the texture of the cheese has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. (Raw-milk unpasteurized cheese that has been aged less than 60 days is what you need to avoid, and it's really easy, because it's ILLEGAL to sell raw-milk cheese that's been aged less than 60 days in the U.S. But visit any pregnancy message board on the Internet and you'll find women asking whether it's okay to have cream cheese on their bagel.)

A lot of the warnings seem to be based on the idea that women aren't responsible enough to understand MODERATION. A occasional glass of wine is probably okay, but what if someone thinks "occasional" means "one every other hour"? Oh noes! Teh babies! A thin nightly application of an over-the-counter acne cream with a small amount of salicylic acid is okay, but then what if pregnant women forget to tell their doctor about their prescription for Accutane? (Which...you should never, ever, EVER take during pregnancy. There's no grey area about that one.)

(Oh, and did you know you have a higher likelihood of contracting a food-bourne illness from McDonald's than from a nice sushi restaurant or a wedge of Brie? It's true, and yet nobody is telling pregnant women to give up their Big Macs...just those "weird" foreign foods. How INNNNTERESTING!)

ANYWAY. I have gone off on a wild tangent. Personally, I don't believe you need to worry about the products you're using. Over-the-counter non-prescription strength versions of retinol and salicylic acid are extremely unlikely to cause birth defects, and I used both during my pregnancy with Noah. (Hope in a Bottle exfoliating moisturizer and a retinol eye cream that I can't remember the name of anymore.)

If you find that the nagging worry just won't go away, however, there's no sense in stressing about your SKINCARE products just so I can prove a point about ridiculous pregnancy warnings. Treat yourself to Philosophy's Purity wash and Hope in a Jar moisturizer, which work great for my combination AND pregnant skin and contain no suspect ingredients, and tell yourself that you need to spend the extra money right now for the good of the baby.

And I suppose this is as good of a place as any to finally address the Cosmetics Database site by the Environmental Working Group, that I seriously get weekly emails about from people who are either Pissed As Hell or Terrified Out Of Their Wits. Yes. There's some scary stuff on there. But no, I'm not throwing out the contents of my makeup drawer just yet, as I've yet to fully make up my mind about the site. There's some very good information on there, DEFINITELY, but a lot of it is lacking in the necessary context. Why no links to the studies they reference as proof of the dangers? Or even just excerpts or summaries of the methods and findings? It's all a little too "WE'VE read the studies so you don't have to, now take our word for it" for me.

Anytime anyone starts talking about toxicity and carcinogens and what-have-you, it's very important to consider the LEVELS it would require to cause harm. Just like a lot of old studies about artificial sweeteners would have required a real-world equivalent of 350 cans of diet soda a DAY to replicate the results seen in lab mice, I wonder if many of the warnings about trace ingredients in moisturizers and powder compacts are a tad overblown at the levels we really use them at. Plus, I simply flat-out disagree with some of the EWG's pet causes, like all the dangers in sunscreen, for example. But we do agree that added "fragrance" is crap. So. Visit the site and poke around, and make up your own mind. I certainly do fall into the "better safe than sorry" group about a lot of stuff (usually anything I use on my kid -- I'll toss out anything that bears the slightest hint of risk), but I'm also a skeptic who enjoys my patch of middle ground.

But finally -- and I should have started with this before getting up on my little pet soapbox -- I am very sorry for your losses this year, and can completely see where the extra worry is coming from. BUT! It's unbelievably unlikely that your miscarriages were caused by anything external that *you* did. And I'm sure you know that, but I figured I'd remind you one last time, which hopefully you find vaguely less annoying than all those people who remind you to "enjoy your sleep while you still can, mwa ha ha haaaa!" Idiots.

Don't forget to visit Amalah's Weekly Pregnancy Calendar.

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Comments (7):

jodifur said:

So much of the pregnancy warnings depend where you live also. In Europe, they are told a glass of wine a week is fine. A friend of mine had a Japanese OB and he said sushi was fine. America goes to the extreme for everything. Even my ob admitted the reason they say no liquor is b.c they are worried if they say in moderation, women will drink too much.

I am also sorry for your loss.

Posted on March 28, 2008 13:39

Wallydraigle said:

I think if one more person tells me in a condescending tone, "Now, remember--no alcohol for you!" I will get medieval on their hineys. And I'm pretty sure that won't be good for the baby. I'm a responsible, grown woman with a respectable IQ. Most pregnant women probably are. Why do we get treated like preschoolers?

Posted on March 28, 2008 13:56

Cassandra said:

So, I totally didn't know about that website until just now, and now I've spent hours figuring out that everything I own is going to give me cancer/cause organ failure.

Posted on March 29, 2008 11:39

sarawr said:

So, I had (past tense for reasons that will become clear) a friend who, during her third pregnancy in two and a half years, loudly lamented the fact that she could not drink. As her replacement for a glass of wine was a joint, I was a bit hasty in letting her know that the occasional small glass of red wine would probably okay. At our next get-together, she told me she'd looked into this fact and discovered that I was right, thanked me profusely, and proceeded to drink eight glasses of wine. A bottle and a half of wine, in one sitting, while five months pregnant. She was drunk. Not the kind of drunk you get when you have two ounces of red to be polite at a dinner when you've been teetotaling for eight months, but the kind of drunk you get at the Kappa Kappa Whatever house during freshman year when you're looking for a cooler identity.

A few bad apples spoil the bushel, is what I'm saying. Apparently, some pregnant women can't apply common sense to questions of moderation and harm. I hate those women, because they are the reason I got kicked out of a restaurant when I was pregnant -- not for drinking, but for being in a place that served alcohol with a popped-out navel; the owner was "uncomfortable" because of idiotic people like the aforementioned. Feh.

Posted on March 29, 2008 14:25

Amy Corbett Storch said:

sarawr -- those stories, BOTH OF THEM, are crazy, although deep down I'm totally not surprised. I once got scolded by the *parking valet* outside a sushi restaurant because he didn't think I should be eating there.

And yet...I also once watched a very pregnant woman smoke heavily and drink straight whiskey at a friend's birthday party, with the excuse that she did it with her other two pregnancies and "they turned out fine."

In sum, some people are dumb, but I'm not, so back the eff off.

(And Cassandra -- same results here, which is why I kind of have a hard time taking it that seriously. We'd all be long dead by now, honestly. In fact, the only product I own that has a really LOW risk number is Bare Escentuals -- which is also the only product I own that actually caused me fairly serious problems! The irony!)

Posted on March 30, 2008 20:57

leahkay said:

My OB told me eating sushi while pregnant was FINE so long as I wasn't getting it from sketchy joint with no refrigeration. "Think about what pregnant women eat in Japan!" she said, and, yeah, she's right. That said, miscarriages have a way with screwing up one's idea of what's acceptable and what's not, so don't let anyone pressure you into eating/wearing/doing things you don't want to do just to prove you're not paranoid.

Posted on March 31, 2008 20:20

bunnybunny said:

Yep, it grinds me too how not only people think you've lost your common sense... but especially how total strangers think they have a right to opine on your condition.
However, you also have every right to freak out about anything you want, including skincare. Particularly after everything you've been through - and I'm so sorry about your miscarriages.
I'm a makeup artist and the two most important things (which you are doing) are exfoliation and moisturizing. If going totally chemical-free helps you sleep at night, you can easily replace those products with Lush products... you can practically eat their ingredients and their skincare is quite sophisticated. They have Angels on Bareskin and Mask of Magnaminty for exfoliation and a skin cream called Gorgeous that comes with a huge price tag (80 bucks) but is a really great product.
If you don't necessarily want to go full-on natural, I also find the staff at Kiehls very good - they can tell you exactly what the ingredients are and even where they came from. They're also uber-generous with samples so you can try before you invest.

Posted on April 2, 2008 12:27

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Amalah is a pseudonym of Amy Corbett Storch. A Washington D.C.-based freelance writer. The Smackdown is published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You can follow Amy's daily mothering adventures at www.amalah.com. Also, it's pronounced AIM-ah-lah.

Amy is also documenting her second pregnancy in a Weekly Pregnancy Calendar, Zero to Forty.

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