When I had my daughter I was studying to be a homeopath so was well-placed to ask trained professionals with decades of experience the answer to the question - is Homeopathy safe in pregnancy?
Pregnancy can be a very anxious time and it can feel as if a normal healthy pregnancy is the exception rather than the rule. I was particularly anxious with this pregnancy having not long lost a little boy at 20 weeks.
Even when they’re safely born you’re not out of the woods. I think all parents check their babies more than is necessary in the early weeks to make sure they’re still breathing. Not without reason. Pregnancy, birth and the first year are statistically the riskiest time for mothers and babies. And when babies are ill they can be quite dramatically out of sorts with high temperatures, frightening rashes and alarming screaming. I run workshops throughout the year to help people learn how to use homeopathy to treat common ailments around the home.
Some couples have difficulty conceiving, some struggle getting to full term, some have lost babies at or soon after birth and some have miserable pregnancies due to pregnancy complications, either caused by the pregnancy or existing conditions for which they have to come off the medication managing their symptoms.
And in the middle of all this risk where is the medication to help us through? Even paracetamol, considered one of the safest medications is only recommended if you really need it. Tommy's have a useful list of medications considered safe for common complaints and those best avoided. https://www.tommys.org/pregnancy-information/im-pregnant/drugs-and-medicine-in-pregnancy
What are homeopathic remedies?
Homeopathy is an energetic medicine which means it doesn’t contain any molecules other than water. To make a remedy a substance is dissolved in water, then 1 drop of that solution is dissolved in more water, then one drop of that in more. This process is done over and over again until no part of the original substance remains - only its energetic blueprint. If the original substance brings you out in an itchy rash, then if that is what you have, the two cancel each other out and your symptoms disappear.
Sounds like magic - it can work like magic and (surprisingly for some) is backed up by increasing amounts of evidence. According to the European Central Council of Homeopaths “The explanation of the mechanism of action currently appears to lie between the fields of nano-technology and electromagnetism.” https://homeopathy-ecch.org/homeopathy-in-europe/research/. Further research if you're interested can be found at https://www.hri-research.org/
No Side-Effects
Importantly for pregnant women this means there is a medicine which has no side-effects, contains nothing that can harm your baby and can improve the outcome of your pregnancy. Not to mention help you get your hormones straight again afterwards and help you look after common ailments in the early years. If you want to find out more about how to use homeopathy to help your young family, I’d love to show you at one of my workshops.
As with all medicines, it is important to make sure you have the right remedy and the right potency as too strong a dose can provoke a temporary aggravation of your symptoms. Homeopathy therefore, is safe to use if you are pregnant but please consult a registered homeopath.
It's all about balance.
Sometimes people come to me when IVF has not worked. According to current thinking, 6 rounds are thought to be the number needed to give you the best chance of conceiving. Many mothers become pregnant before that but even one or two rounds can be brutally disrupting emotionally and hormonally.
What homeopathy does with any complaint is looks at why the body is not getting pregnant in the first place. Often there is an emotional element, the woman could have had years of synthetic hormones or even an issue with the father that no IVF will ever help. My favourite mantra for life and homeopathy is that "it's all about balance" and in conception it really is. Once all this has been examined and rebalanced, things often fall into place and if still needed there are also one or two remedies which can be very helpful for getting the body ready to reproduce.
So is homeopathy safe in pregnancy?
Not only are homeopathic remedies safe, they make all the difference between a long list of irritating sleep-preventers and arriving healthy and well at the 9 month mark. I had two pregnancies before I had the benefit of homeopathic remedies. During both I was plagued at various stages with heartburn, restless legs, constant urging to urinate - for no more than a drop, terrible breast tenderness, stretch marks and incredible tiredness. During my last pregnancy I was fortunate to have a homeopathic midwife take us for our lectures on Anatomy and Physiology who shared her knowledge of the tissue salts in pregnancy. I pass this on to every patient carrying a baby. It turns out these niggly symptoms are all to do with your lodger taking the nutrients they need to grow, leaving us vessels a bit depleted. What the tissue salts do is help the body to re-balance the stressed cells to absorb what they need and function as well as they can - thereby eradicating those annoying symptoms you get told don't matter because it's "only 9 months".
I love homeopathy for pregnancy. It provided me with a safe, effective, alternative to drugs. Every organ in my body was working overtime to bring new life into this world and with homeopathy I finally had something to support me I had not experienced in the pregnancies before. This is them before they turned into teenagers. I'll post about that one day when I've recovered....
