Catera Bentley stared at the positive pregnancy test and couldn’t believe her eyes. She took a second test, then a third — there was no question. She was pregnant.
She called her husband at work and told him that there was a giant spider in the house that he had to come get rid of. He rushed home, and when he arrived, Bentley revealed the news. They both burst into tears.
Injection pens move along a conveyor at the Novo Nordisk A/S production facilities in Hillerod, Denmark on June 12, 2023. The success of Novo’s bestsellers Ozempic and Wegovy drugs that help people lose significant amounts of weight, has created something of a gold rush in the pharma industry with about 40 companies developing products that will intensify competition. Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The couple, who live in Steele, Alabama, had been trying to have a child for more than two years, but Bentley’s doctor had told her that she may be unable to conceive because of her history of polycystic ovary syndrome, known as PCOS.
The news had left her feeling without a purpose. “That’s all I wanted to be was a mom and a wife,” said Bentley, 25. “I was depressed, severely depressed for that whole time.”
Five months earlier, in October 2022, Bentley had started taking Mounjaro for weight loss. Over the first few months, she said, she lost about 40 pounds. Her menstrual cycles, which had been irregular because of PCOS, became normal. And she even felt happier.
“It just made me feel like a whole new person,” she said. “I was in a better mood every single day.”
Bentley had hoped that losing weight might help her get pregnant, and she’d heard about others having success with weight loss while taking the shot. But when she did become pregnant — sooner than she expected — she worried about the effects it might have on her baby.
‘Ozempic babies’
Bentley is far from alone. Numerous women have shared stories of “Ozempic babies” on social media. But the joy some experience in discovering pregnancies may come with anxiety about the unknowns, as these medicines haven’t been studied in people who are pregnant.
“We don’t know the effect of early exposure … on the fetus,” said Dr. Jody Dushay, a physician focused on endocrinology and metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
Dushay said she recommends that women stop taking these drugs two months before trying to get pregnant, as directed in their prescribing information.