hi.. I just landed here and saw your post, so my first post is a reply to you.
I have been on topamax for over a year for bi-polar - I am also epileptic, I have both grand mal and petite mal seizures. I have been on Tegretol, Dilantin, Depakote, and Phenobarb for the seizures, and was allergic to the Dilantin and had massive weight gain from the Depakote, while the Tegretol was ruining my liver. Once I started taking the phenobarb, things seemed to be alright, but I still had seizures, as I did with all of the others, just not as often as without meds.
As you may already know, the major concern when taking anti-convulsants while pregnant is the chance (like 3 out 100 last I heard) of the baby having spinal or nueral tube birth defects like spina-bifida. I have always been told to take folic acid every day to reduce the risk, but I also just quit taking the meds when I found out I was pregnant, but that has always been late third otrimester or early second. Luckily, things have been just fine. This has been 4 pregnancies.
In the last 3 weeks, I found out I am pregnant for the 5th time. turns out the topamax messes with birth control, so here we are once again. I am currently just under 14 weeks, and have yet to find out about any defects. I took my topamax (which I LOVED and miss) until I found out I was pregnant, at just about 11 weeks.
I did a lot of research and found that really the only testing on pregnancy with topamax has been with rabbits, rats and mice. In all of these studies, they found that the dosage of topamax had to be increased anywhere from 6 to 10 times the recommended highest dosage for the neural tube defects to take place.
I have only been taking 100mg once a day, about 1/2 that highest dose reccomendation, so I hope things will be fine. But at the same time I have been on my antidepressant, and my sleep med, also up until the same time I stopped taking the topamax.
I discussed with my OB that I had found out that topamax was a class C med, meaning that there havent been sufficiant tests done on people during pregnancy to say one way or the other. His reply was that even though it hasnt shown to be good, class C also means that it hasn't been found to be BAD... and to continue both the Topamax and the anti-depressant until told otherwise by my shrink..
I called for an appointment with my shrink, who called back and told me to stop the topamax immediately, but to stay on the antidepressant...
so until my next appointment, I really don't know.. but with the research I have done, I feel fairly confident that things will be fine.
For you, who are thinking about starting a family, I say.. MAKE SURE you're taking FOLIC ACID EVERY DAY. My nuerologist even stressed this when I told him I was pregnant 10 years ago, while I was on the phenobarb.
From everything I have read, the topamax isn't as bad as a lot of the other anti-convulsants out there during pregnancy... like everything else I have been on.. but I can't say for sure, since my shrink still took me off from it so abruptly.
Hopefully there has been some info for you in all of this, I am just trying to give you something to relate to.
