As this is our first post, we would like to tell you a bit more about BUMPS.

Who are we and what do we do?

BUMPS is a website for women and their partners that provides evidence-based information about the safety of medicines in pregnancy. It also houses a secure database for women to record details of their own pregnancies.

BUMPS content is produced by the UK Teratology Information Service (UKTIS), a non-profit organisation funded by Public Health England. Since 1983, UKTIS has been providing scientific information directly to healthcare providers on the effects that use of medicines, recreational drugs, and chemicals may have on the unborn baby.

We at UKTIS created BUMPS in 2014, as healthcare providers often asked if our information was available in a format that was understandable to everyone. So far, the leaflets have been very successful, with around 4,000 hits every day. Although BUMPS leaflets are written with women in mind, feedback from health professionals indicates that they themselves also use BUMPS to help women make informed decisions about use of medicines in pregnancy.

BUMPS leaflets are sometimes difficult to write because information about the effects of some medications on the unborn baby may be lacking. To find out more about the safety of some medicines, especially those that are quite new or not often used in women of childbearing age, more information needs to be collected. We therefore decided to provide a way in which women themselves could easily report information to us.  We know that women are often happy to report the details of their own pregnancies, and usually able to provide accurate information about all medicines they may have taken and lifestyle factors. We can then look at the data to better understand how medicines and other factors may affect a baby’s development in the womb. This information can be used help pregnant women in the future make informed decisions about medicine use.

The BUMPS website therefore offers all women the option to create their own password protected ‘my bump’s record’ to provide details about their pregnancy, even if they have not taken any medicines, or their pregnancy did not result in a healthy baby. If you would like to help, please create a BUMPS account, at the ‘join now’ page.