Читать книгу Infants and Children in Context - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 150

Prenatal development can be influenced by many contextual factors, including environmental factors, maternal illness, and maternal consumption of over-the-counter (OTC), prescription, and recreational drugs, among others. Sometimes a pregnant woman and her doctor must make a difficult choice between forgoing a needed prescription drug and putting the fetus at risk. In those cases, the woman and her doctor must weigh not just the risks to the fetus but the benefits of the medication to the mother and the potential harm from forgoing it. Frequently, the risks are deemed as justified to protect the woman’s mental and physical health. In most cases, women are unaware of their pregnancies until after the first few weeks of the embryonic stage. Thus, in the real world, almost no pregnancy can be entirely free of exposure to teratogens. However, each year, about 97% of infants are born without defects (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017a). Next, we examine common teratogens.