[ellings4]

Congratulations – it’s awesome that you’ve managed to turn your grades around so quickly after you got diagnosed.
I’m assuming that you are describing your undergraduate grades and are asking about applying to graduate schools?
I’m coming from a perspective of someone who spent many years in graduate school and has mentored undergrads who are applying (so, not from an admissions point of view).
I’d say that in your case (where you have such clear evidence that you have turned your grades around and are quite successfully managing your ADHD now) that this could be something that would be beneficial to mention in your application’s personal statement. There is still, of course, the danger of people with stereotypes that get in the way of their judgment. But in my experience in graduate school, you don’t want an advisor like that anyway. Being “out and proud” about ADHD in graduate school would have helped me a ton… hiding it gets in the way of everything. But that’s only one person’s thoughts, go with your gut.

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[ellings4]

@mbadd
This post is from a while ago so I wonder how it went and if you have any insight for someone in your shoes now?
I haven’t yet found meds/dosage where the side effects weren’t terrible (I didn’t get diagnosed until last year) so it was an easy decision to stop trying to find something that works until later – but this is so much worse than normal untreated ADHD and I’m not sure I can make it 6 more months like this at my job. Maybe the second trimester is better? Do you (or anyone else) have any info or stories of how symptoms changed over the 9 months? It’s nice just to hear that others have done this. Thanks!!!

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[ellings4]

Since this post is from 2015, I’m curious what you ended up doing and what your experience was with your second pregnancy. I was diagnosed only about a year before getting pregnant (for the first time) and I was trying different meds but the side effects were pretty bad and I hadn’t found any that made my life better yet – so I’m just comparing pre-treatment ADHD to pregnant ADHD. So far pregnant ADHD is terrible (way worse than the normal fog). I’m just starting the second trimester and holding out some hope that I can get back to some things that have been effective like exercise. But I’d really love to hear from others. This must be pretty common but I really haven’t been able to find much information at all. There is some information about how changing hormones during a woman’s menstrual cycle affect ADHD symptoms – and it seems that when progesterone is high, symptoms are worse, and when estrogen is high, symptoms are better. But in pregnancy, both are way higher… so who knows. For me, in the first trimester of pregnancy, it has felt like ADHD at the worst time of the month x100. But all these hormones change and I’m hoping that during the second trimester when I’m starting to not feel so nauseous all the time and can do better at eating healthy and exercising (which have helped before) that things might be a bit better (for example – hoping I can pull my job performance back from the brink…). I’d love to hear how this went for you and any other ladies who have been through this – it can’t be as rare as the amount of info on it would make it seem!

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[ellings4]

There isn’t much research on this so generally, the advice is to avoid meds while both pregnant and breastfeeding, but some people do stay on meds under the supervision of their doctor if the risks of going off are worse than the risks.

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