Your pregnancy experience with dry eyes

[laine]

Hi,
I am hoping to find out whether to expect my meibomitis and dry eyes to worsen or improve during pregnancy. If any of you have gone through a pregnancy, I would really love to hear how things were with your eyes. I know that my eye irritation and dryness are connected to shifts in my hormones and with the high levels of hormones during pregnancy, I am very curious as to what to expect.
Elaine

[Rebecca Petris]

Mine were really bad in the third trimester. Well worth it though

[green eyes2]

Strangely, my eyes improved during pregnancy. They seemed to feel better as the pregnancy progressed. I was hospitalized at 28 weeks for pregnancy-induced high blood pressure (common in triplet pregnancies) and was in the hospital four weeks. I remember that I didn't need any eyedrops the entire hospital stay. Unfortunately, it didn't last and my eyes started bothering me again about three to four weeks after delivery.

I've read that many women without dry eye problems develop dry eyes during pregnancy, though. Like in menopause not every woman will develop dry eye problems but many do. Hopefully, your eyes will improve or at least remain the "status quo."

P.S. Are you pregnant? If so, congratulations!

[Helen26]

Pregnany and Dry Eye

I know that you can't take doxycycline whilst pregnant but what about Restasis, I can't find much information about this. Has anyone still used Restasis whilst pregnant?

I would love to have another child (I've already got a 4 year old) but since my dry eye developed I'm struggling to look after myself and I don't know how I'd cope with a baby and all the sleepless nights, etc.

Helen

[green eyes2]

Hi Helen,
My doctor said not to take Restasis during pregnancy. It is a category C drug, which means it is not known whether it will be harmful to an unborn baby. It is also not known whether or not it passes into breastmilk while breastfeeding.

[laine]

Thanks so much for your replies

It sounds as if there may be some hope for me. I worry so much about getting pregnant due to the fact that I have to come off of the salagen, which cannot be taken during a pregnancy.
Thank you,
Elaine

[YGB]

This may be a bit of a stretch, and please be do not try this at home since I have no scientific basis for this thought, but I wonder if there has been any research on possible benefits of putting breast milk in the eye (kind of like autologous serum). I DON'T recommend anybody try this unless there is something that has shown that it helps. However, breast milk has many vital vitamins and minerals for infants and is of course very natural. Perhaps if it is provent to work someday (if anybody ever researches it), then my wife and I will add a third child to the clan and the baby and I will battle over the milk . Again, this is purely off the cuff and I have not read anything about it, but I'm just doing some of my zany preliminary "brainstorming".

BTW, I have no comment on my pregancy experience (title of this thread) since some have already learned that I, YGB, am really a guy

[dianat]

YGB,

So, what the heck is it that you do all day?! You should be a shock DJ or something. Where do you get this stuff?

Now, I have joked that if goat semen were good for dry eye then I'd be right there on a farm with a gloved hand, but honestly breast milk never even occured to me. This is odd too since I just weaned my son not three weeks ago.

I've never accidentally gotten breast milk in my eye, so I cannot comment on its value. My son, however, spit up about a thousand times in his first three months and used to get it all over himself...probably in his eyes on occasion.

Come to think of it, he's never complained about his eyes...hmmm...

[Rebecca Petris]

Funny, I ran across this reference just in the last week or so, can't remember in what context.

Spectacular improvement of severe dry eye syndrome by instillation of colostrum

[YGB]

YGB,

So, what the heck is it that you do all day?!

You should be a shock DJ or something. Where do you get this stuff?

Like the KGB, the YGB "guy" is not at liberty to discuss what he does all day due to the high level of security involved in the YGB role (how did YGB become a 3rd person in this thread? ). You would think that YGB is a professional athlete talking to a reporter or something.

I will say with tongue-in-cheek that I moonlighted as a shock DJ up until about a week ago. I came up with this great brainstorm idea that I think only a shock DJ or LASIK surgeon could come up with. I thought ... hmmm ... how about we give away a Wee video game to the person who drinks the most water and can holds their "wee". Of course, I am just joking that the LASIK surgeon would have thought of this gimmick because everyone knows that a LASIK MD is much smarter than that. You see, unlike the LASIK MD, the radio station did not have the contestants sign a vague informed consent form stating that a person can get very sick and even die from water intoxification if they try this "game". This story may not make sense to those who are unaware of one of the sensationalized stories in the US media this past week.