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Veterinary employee trying to concieve

Hello! 

I'm hoping to find other veterinary professionals who are trying to conceive or who are pregnant. 

I am an SVN at a practice that does a lot of conscious X-rays, masked anaesthesia and where inflating the cuff on ET tubes is frowned upon. 

I'm trying to conceive and terrified about how my work place could damage my baby. Would love some advice xx 

Replies

  • Hi Kirsty! 

    I am a small animal vet and am currently 21 weeks pregnant with our first child. 

    We took about six months to conceive, and when we were trying I tried to be fairly sensible with X-rays but mainly carried on as normal. 

    As soon as we found out we were pregnant I told my boss and she sat down with me with the health and safety manual. To be fair most things should be safe following normal H&S anyway, but my practice does have extra precautions around anaesthetics and X-rays once you are pregnant. 

    What anaesthetic gases do you use? From what I can gather iso and sevo are very unlikely to cause problems but I am avoiding nitrous oxide completely at the moment. 

    With xrays, I take it you wear lead if you have to hold any animals anyway?

    From my research, exposure to anaesthetics/X-rays/cytotoxic drugs whilst trying to conceive could make it take longer to conceive/ cause very early miscarriage but is unlikely to cause any problems to an established pregnancy or Any health problems for your baby.

    If you have a good relationship with your boss and can let them know you are trying for a baby then they should make things as safe as possible for you straight away, like getting other people to monitor masked anaesthetics or do conscious X-rays. The other thing you can be doing yourself is being really careful about wearing gloves when handling medications and stuff to minimise any risk. 

    Hope some of this is helpful, and sorry for the essay!! Good luck and do let me know how you are getting on :-) 

    Bunny X 

  • Hi sorry for the delayed reply. Thank you so much for your message. 

    I took a test today and got a positive on a 10mIU/ml test. I need to tell my boss but scared she will be annoyed with me as I'm an SVN. Due to qualify in January. She's a lovely boss but it's still terrifying and makes me worry that I will jinx this pregnancy :S 

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