I had a root canal that got infected about a year ago and was told I needed a re-treatment. The dentist gave me antibiotics and the infection and pain cleared up. I got busy and never made an appointment to have it retreated.
Well, the last couple days it's started bothering me again. It's the same tooth that was bothering me last time. I have horrible teeth in general so I'm not entirely surprised. In my pregnancy with DS I had to have a root canal at 35 weeks and everything was fine. I'm just worried this time because I'm only 7 weeks. I feel like the risk of an infection outweighs the risk of having work done so early. I'm kicking myself for not taking care of this before.
Not quite that early, but I had a cavity filled in a wisdom tooth around 14-15 weeks in my recent pregnancy. I also was doing Invisalign from before I was pregnant until around the beginning of 3rd tri. I agree that an untreated/delayed treatment infection would probably be worse.
Call your dentist and ask what their policies are during pregnancy. A lot of dentists prefer to delay procedures until 2nd tri and/or require a written medical release from your OB before they’ll treat you or take xrays.
Just an update in case anyone is researching this topic in the future and would like to see someone else's experience...
My endodontist was very cautious, which I appreciated. He wasn't entirely convinced that the pain I was feeling was from the root canal that had an infection as much as the wisdom tooth next to it with a big cavity. What he did was opened up the root canal and applied medicine to treat the infection. I'm scheduled to go back in 2 months when I'm in the 2nd trimester and it's safer to finish the root canal re-treatment. He coordinated with my general dentist and had me to go get that wisdom tooth extracted while I was still numb from the endodontist appointment to prevent another infection and pain. It was all very dramatic in the moment, but in the end we all agreed the infection needed to be addressed and that wisdom tooth was a source of discomfort so if it could be taken out without additional medication it would be good to prevent pain management and infection in the future.
In my first pregnancy I had one or two root canals and my general dentist said the hormones plus increased blood flow do that to women all the time. He also mentioned that I have soft enamel and am more prone to cavities (and pointed out how I had missed the last cleaning lol) so it's just important to stay ahead of any problems to avoid them getting to this point.