So, your body is no longer harbouring just one life form, but two of them.
However, one of them is most definitely wanted while the other is completely unwanted and you want to kick it out as soon as possible. How do you do it? How do you get rid of that uncomfortable nail infection while you work on your pregnancy glow and cultivate that ‘modern momma’ Instagram aesthetic?
Don’t worry – there are solutions out there… they just might be a little more limited than if you didn’t have a bun in the oven.
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What Not To Do
So before we give you the solutions that will work best for you, let’s just make sure you know what not to do: as any good doctor will tell you when you’re pregnant, don’t put any drugs into your body unless you check it with a medical professional to see how it will affect the baby. When pregnant, the body basically changes chemical composition – hormones go completely out of whack from what you’re normally expecting, so even the most basic of medicines, like Aspirin, can affect you in a wholly different way.
Oral medication like Lamisil
We’re not going to give you an in-depth science paper on how the body changes during pregnancy, that’s kind of outside of our purview. But we will recommend that you stay away from any oral medication to treat your infected nails like Lamisil. This is a prescription drug, so you can’t get it unless your doctor prescribes it, and that’s unlikely to happen. There are debates in the lofty halls of science arguing that the foetus would be fine when taking an antifungal. Or that it’s safe during pregnancy but not safe postpartum. However, we recommend that you stay away from all of those chances by avoiding oral, anti-fungal medication altogether.
What To Do
The better solution for you to treat your nail fungus during pregnancy is topical medication and solutions. This could include creams, ointments, or nail lacquers that are applied directly to (or around) the infected area. Most of these topicals have ingredients that are antifungal in nature, but because they are for use outside the body they will be localised, rather than an oral drug that can affect the foetus adversely.
We will give a certain caveat by saying that these creams and polishes should be safe if they are used while you are pregnant. However, there hasn’t been a conclusive longitudinal study looking at the effect of topical medications for nail fungus while pregnant (to be fair, that’s a pretty specific situation). Again, we’d advise you to check with your doctor to see what their recommendation would be.
Then again, if the idea of topical medication isn’t necessarily sounding safe to you, you can always try some low-stakes at-home remedies. Or, you could simply do your best to limit the spread of the infection until you’ve given birth.
Fungal nail infection is rarely an emergency (unless you are in acute pain and your nail is fully disintegrating), so giving your feet lots of breathing space and keeping them clean will stave off the spread of fungus until you can treat it with oral medication.
