Skincare and Pregnancy: What to Pause, and What to Ask Your Doctor

It is one of the most common questions we get asked at the counter, usually quietly, and usually by someone holding a product they already own: can I keep using this now that I am pregnant?

The honest answer is that we are a shop, not a clinic, and the person who should make that call is your midwife, GP or obstetrician. What we can do is explain what the research actually says, so the conversation you have with them is a better one.

Start here: this is a medical question

Nothing below is medical advice, and no product should be treated as approved for pregnancy on the strength of a blog article. Take your actual products to your next appointment. A midwife can look at an ingredients list in about thirty seconds and give you an answer specific to you, which is worth more than any general guidance.

That is not a disclaimer we are adding to be careful. Pregnancy skincare advice online is unusually poor, and a lot of it is written by people selling something.

Retinoids are the one everyone asks about

Vitamin A derivatives are where the concern sits, and it is the category most worth raising with your doctor. Oral isotretinoin is well established as dangerous in pregnancy. Topical retinoids are a different exposure and the evidence base is smaller, which is exactly why blanket statements in either direction are unhelpful.

A 2026 Nordic cohort study in the British Journal of Dermatology (Refsum and colleagues) looked at topical retinoid use in women of reproductive age and the risk of major congenital malformations in exposed pregnancies. It is the kind of large population study that adds real information to a question that has historically been answered with caution rather than data.

A 2026 narrative review in Dermatology and Therapy (Davis and colleagues) covers skin changes in pregnancy and medication management more broadly, and is a useful summary of how dermatologists think about the whole category.

What we do in practice: if you tell us you are pregnant or trying to conceive, we will not sell you a retinoid, and we will suggest you pause any you already have until you have spoken to your doctor. That is the conservative position and we are comfortable with it.

What tends to get simplified

A lot of pregnancy skincare advice online is a list of banned ingredients copied from another list. Two things get lost.

The first is that concentration and how much skin it covers both matter. A rinse-off cleanser and a leave-on serum are not the same exposure, even at the same percentage.

The second is that pregnancy changes skin on its own. Melasma is more common, skin often becomes more reactive, and things that never stung before might. Some of what people blame on a product is the pregnancy itself. If you want the detail on pigmentation, we wrote about that in why melasma is different.

What a simpler routine looks like

Most people do not need to throw everything out. They need to stop experimenting for a while.

• A gentle cleanser. Nothing stripping, nothing new.
• Something hydrating. Skin that feels tight is the most common complaint we hear, and a humectant plus a moisturiser usually settles it.
• Sunscreen, daily. This is the one to keep rather than drop. Pigmentation is more likely during pregnancy, and sun exposure makes it more visible. New Zealand's UV makes this matter more than it would elsewhere.
• Nothing brand new. A pregnancy is a poor time to introduce an active, because if your skin reacts you will not know what caused it.

If you want the reasoning behind daily SPF, we covered the UVA and UVB difference in does sunscreen cause vitamin D deficiency.

What about the salon?

Tell your therapist you are pregnant when you book, not when you arrive. It changes what we recommend and how we position you, and some treatments are better postponed. There is no awkwardness in it, and it is a normal conversation we have most weeks.

The short version

Pause the actives, keep the sunscreen, stop introducing new products, and take your actual bottles to your next appointment. If you want a hand simplifying a routine down to something sensible for the next nine months, come and see us in Parnell. We will happily talk you out of buying things.