Skincare to stop before trying to conceive

What actually has a published rule about stopping before you conceive?

Two medicines do, and both of them are swallowed rather than applied. Isotretinoin and acitretin are the oral retinoids used for severe acne and severe psoriasis, and each carries an instruction written about the period before a pregnancy exists rather than about a pregnancy that already does.

For isotretinoin, the NIH’s MedlinePlus says you must use two acceptable forms of birth control for 1 month before you begin to take isotretinoin, during your treatment and for 1 month after your treatment. A pregnancy test is required at the last dose and again 30 days after it, and blood donation is off the table during treatment and for a month after. MotherToBaby puts the same number the way somebody planning would ask it: it is recommended to wait one month after stopping isotretinoin before trying to get pregnant.

For acitretin the number is not one month. MedlinePlus opens its warning with do not take acitretin if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant within the next 3 years, asks for two forms of birth control for a month before, throughout treatment and for three years after it, and asks for pregnancy tests across that whole three year tail. The blood donation ban runs three years too.

That is the published list, in full, as far as this post could verify it. Two prescriptions, both taken by mouth. Every other item that appears on a trying to conceive list somewhere comes from one of two other places, and the next two sections are about which.

Why does acitretin need three years and isotretinoin one month?

Acitretin needs three years because acitretin stays in the body for years, and isotretinoin needs one month because isotretinoin does not. The waiting period tracks how long the compound is around, which is the single most useful idea in this whole subject and the one almost no consumer page makes.

MedlinePlus says the persistent part out loud in the strangest looking instruction on the acitretin page, the one about drinking. It asks you to avoid anything containing alcohol during treatment and for two months after it, because alcohol and acitretin combine to form a substance that remains in the blood for a long time and can harm the fetus. That is the three years explained in one sentence. The rule is not about how dangerous acitretin is relative to isotretinoin. It is about how long it takes to be gone. The blood donation bans make the same point twice over: one month after isotretinoin, three years after acitretin, which are the two contraception numbers again. The length is a fact about the compound, not about the condition being treated.

Where the argument stops, and why it stops there

A persistence argument is only worth anything for a compound somebody has actually measured, and it is very tempting to extend it to the retinoid most people are actually using, which is a cream. MotherToBaby has measured that one, and the answer goes the other way: in healthy non-pregnant adults, it takes up to 1 day, on average, for most of the tretinoin to be gone from the body. One day, not one month.

The next two sentences on that page are the most honest thing published on this subject anywhere, and they are worth quoting whole. The makers of oral isotretinoin suggest that women stop using isotretinoin 1 month before trying to get pregnant. Based on this suggestion for isotretinoin, it may be suggested to stop using tretinoin 1 month before trying to get pregnant. Read that twice. The one month figure you will find attached to topical tretinoin is not a measurement of tretinoin. It is isotretinoin’s number, carried across because the two compounds are related, and MotherToBaby is unusual in admitting that is what it is doing. Every other page that prints the number prints it as a finding.

The same page is equally plain about the question a lot of people are really asking. Studies have not been done to see if tretinoin can make it harder to become pregnant. Not reassuring and not alarming. Nobody looked.

Is the rest of the usual list preconception advice, or pregnancy advice?

Pregnancy advice, in every case this post was able to check, and the pages it comes from say so in their own headings. That does not make it wrong. It makes it advice about a different moment, and moving it under a trying to conceive heading without saying so changes what it is asking of you.

The American Academy of Dermatology publishes the list most of these articles are descended from. Its two headings are ingredients to avoid during pregnancy and ingredients to use sparingly during pregnancy, and the sentence introducing the first says you should avoid these products “while you’re pregnant”. The avoid list names the retinoids as one family, isotretinoin, tretinoin, tazarotene, retinol and adapalene together, plus hydroquinone, finasteride, spironolactone, the tetracycline antibiotics and 5-fluorouracil. Five retinoids by name, and the one that is in the most products is not among them, which is a gap worth knowing about before you start checking labels against this list. The use sparingly list names salicylic acid above two per cent, benzoyl peroxide, parabens, phthalates, phenol, triclosan and several essential oils. That two per cent is worth following up, because it is the most misattributed number on this subject: it belongs to the AAD and not to ACOG, and almost every page carrying it says otherwise.

The AAD’s acne page is more explicit still about the trigger. If you’re pregnant, immediately stop taking these medications, it says of isotretinoin, tazarotene and spironolactone, and of tretinoin and adapalene it says most experts recommend stopping during pregnancy. ACOG is the same shape: its skin conditions page carries a list of over the counter ingredients that can be used during pregnancy and says topical retinoid use is generally recommended to be avoided during it. The condition in all three is being pregnant.

The one sentence a dermatology body does address to you

The AAD does write one line for somebody at this stage, and it is worth noticing what kind of instruction it is. If you’re pregnant or trying to become pregnant, tell your obstetrician and dermatologist about all the medications and prescription skin care you use. They can help update your treatment plan during pregnancy and breastfeeding, if necessary. That is an instruction to tell somebody. It is not a list, it is not a date, and the thing it asks you to update is a treatment plan rather than a shopping basket.

None of this means the borrowed guidance is bad guidance. It means it was written about pregnancy, and a page that reprints it under a trying to conceive heading has silently converted “avoid this while pregnant” into “stop this now”. Those are different instructions, they have different costs, and only one of them was published.

Then why stop anything before you are actually pregnant?

Because of the calendar, not because of the chemistry. A pregnancy is counted from a day roughly two weeks before it begins, so by the time a test can say yes, the count is already past four weeks and the earliest development has happened. That is the real argument for acting early, and it is a completely different argument from the one about how long a compound persists.

MotherToBaby sets out the dating plainly. Gestational age begins with the first day of a person’s last menstrual period. This day is usually about two weeks before pregnancy is conceived. It also says where the sensitive period sits: most birth defects happen in the first trimester, which ends at 13 weeks and 6 days, because that is when the major structures form. Its worked example is the lip, around 6 to 9 weeks. The CDC makes the same point about the earliest part of that window and does not soften it: NTDs happen in the first few weeks of pregnancy, often before you know you are pregnant.

There is already a published preconception month built on exactly this reasoning, and it is instructive that it is about starting something rather than stopping something. ACOG asks for 400 micrograms of folic acid at least 1 month before pregnancy, and the CDC says start taking folic acid at least 1 month before conception. Both bodies will give an instruction a month of lead time. Neither has published one that asks you to stop a cosmetic.

The half of this that nobody quotes, which is the reassuring half

The same MotherToBaby page that explains the dating also explains what happens to an exposure in the earliest days, and it is not what a reader arriving here in a panic expects. The first two weeks after conception, weeks 3 and 4 counted from day one, are known as the “all or none period”. During it the embryo has not implanted and is not sharing a blood supply, and MotherToBaby’s description of the outcome is binary: a severe exposure can end the pregnancy, and anything short of that is expected to leave no effect. If a woman does not have a miscarriage from this early exposure, birth defects are not expected.

That is a rule with exceptions, and MotherToBaby says so in the next breath, asking readers to contact them about a specific exposure rather than applying the principle themselves. It is still the most useful paragraph in print for somebody who used a retinol two days before a positive test, and it is why the honest version of this advice is about the month before rather than about the week after.

Has a regulator ever acted on a cosmetic ingredient for reproductive reasons?

Yes, and it is a fragrance ingredient rather than an active. The European Union classified one and then removed it from cosmetics entirely, which is the closest thing in this whole subject to a regulator acting on the question a person trying to conceive is actually asking.

In 2020 the European Commission gave 2-(4-tert-butylbenzyl)propionaldehyde, EC number 201-289-8 and CAS number 80-54-6, a harmonised classification of Repr. 1B with the hazard code H360Fd, in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/1182. The following year Regulation (EU) 2021/1902, whose stated subject is the use in cosmetic products of substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction, added that compound to Annex II of the cosmetics regulation as prohibited entry 1666, applying from 1 March 2022.

On a label it is called none of that. It is Butylphenyl Methylpropional, and it also went by the trade name Lilial. Truva marks butylphenyl methylpropional Not Recommended on every one of the six profiles, trying to conceive included. Buy cosmetics inside the EU and you will not meet it. Buy from elsewhere and you may.

The difference between the two shelves is legal machinery rather than a disagreement about chemistry, and the FDA says so itself. Its page of prohibited and restricted ingredients in cosmetics runs to eleven entries, mostly aerosol propellants, solvents and preservatives, and no fragrance restricted on reproductive grounds is among them. Under the heading asking why other countries prohibit different things, the FDA writes that it does not have the authority to require cosmetic manufacturers to submit their safety data to FDA, that the burden is on it to prove an ingredient harmful, and that it can weigh other countries’ decisions but can only act inside its own framework.

Note what was and was not published even here. The EU took the ingredient off the shelf. It did not publish a number of weeks to leave between your last use and trying to conceive, because that is not the kind of instruction a cosmetics regulator issues.

Does a male partner need to stop anything?

A male partner has published preconception advice of his own, and it is about smoking, alcohol and drugs rather than about skincare. MotherToBaby is the body that treats this as a subject in its own right, and its fact sheet on paternal exposures explicitly covers the period before a pregnancy is conceived, while trying to conceive pregnancy, or after their partner is pregnant.

Its general answer has two halves. On the pregnancy itself, a male parent does not share a blood connection with a pregnancy, so medications or chemicals in their bloodstream do not reach the fetus, and substances that do enter semen are usually present in amounts too small to matter. On fertility it is less settled: some exposures can change the number, shape or movement of sperm, which is a different mechanism and a real one.

ACOG names the exposures with the evidence behind them. Smoking, drinking alcohol, and using drugs may damage a man’s sperm cells, it says, and asks him to give those up before you try. On a moisturiser there is nothing to report: studies have not been done on whether a man’s use of topical tretinoin affects his fertility or a pregnancy. The one prescription worth raising is isotretinoin, where MedlinePlus records that a very small amount is probably present in semen and that whether it can harm a fetus is not known.

What changes if you are already pregnant, breastfeeding, postpartum or have PCOS?

Trying to conceive is the only one of the six profiles Truva answers for that is defined by something that has not happened yet, and that is exactly why it is the one with the least published behind it. The other five each have a body of guidance addressed to them by name.

If you are trying to conceive

Truva carries a separate verdict for trying to conceive on every ingredient in its catalogue, and it is worth saying plainly what that column is. For the prescriptions with a published washout it is a published instruction. For everything else it is a judgement about the window drawn above, laid over pregnancy guidance. That is the same judgement every other trying to conceive list makes, and the difference is that this one says so, and that the list it produces is shorter and more specific than a reprinted pregnancy article.

If you are already pregnant

Pregnancy is where the guidance actually lives, so everything quoted above applies to you directly rather than by extension, and what stays flagged in pregnancy is a much longer list. If you are here because a test was positive this morning, reread the all or none paragraph, then ring your obstetric provider rather than a search engine.

If you are breastfeeding

Breastfeeding changes the question from what crosses a placenta to what reaches a baby’s mouth, which is why so much of the breastfeeding guidance is about where you put a product rather than whether you use it. Worth knowing here: MedlinePlus asks you not to breastfeed while taking isotretinoin or for a month after stopping, and not to breastfeed on acitretin or if you have recently stopped it.

If you are postpartum and not breastfeeding

Postpartum without breastfeeding returns you to the general list, and what stays flagged once you are postpartum is the shortest of the five. The moment it stops being the right list is the moment you start trying again, which is the transition this post is about.

If you have PCOS

PCOS overlaps with this question more than any other profile, because the treatments most used for its skin symptoms carry the firmest pregnancy warnings. The AAD’s avoid list names spironolactone and finasteride alongside the retinoids, and both are prescribed for hormonal acne and hair loss. The PCOS list is worth reading beside this one, and if you are on a prescription from it, the section below is the part of this post that matters. That split is what Truva was built to make, and the comparison pages set out why a scanner that never asks your situation cannot make it.

What should you actually do before you start trying?

Every named body’s preconception instruction about medicines is an instruction to take them to somebody, and one of them is an explicit instruction not to stop a prescription on your own. That is close to the opposite of what a list of fourteen ingredients to throw away asks you to do.

ACOG opens with the timing: the months before you get pregnant are the best time to take steps to be healthier. Its instruction about medication is to bring them with you: take with you all medications in their bottles, packs, or other packaging, so that somebody qualified is reading the actual labels. The CDC says the same and widens it to all medicines you take, including prescriptions, over-the-counter medicines, supplements, and vitamins.

The sentence worth carrying out of all of this is ACOG’s warning in the other direction. Do not stop taking prescription medication until you have talked with your ob-gyn or other obstetric care provider. Some medications do raise the risk of birth defects, ACOG says, and the benefit of continuing can still outweigh it. An article telling you to bin everything on a list has no way of knowing which of those two you are holding.

So the short version. On isotretinoin or acitretin, your number is on your own medication page and it is one month or three years. On a prescription skin treatment, the AAD’s instruction is to tell your obstetrician and your dermatologist what it is. On over the counter skincare, take it to the same conversation, and know while you are there that nobody has published a rule requiring you to stop any of it before you conceive. Start the folic acid a month out, because that instruction is published and it has the evidence behind it.

Key takeaways

• Two medicines carry a published instruction to stop before conception, and both are taken by mouth. Isotretinoin asks for one month of contraception before, throughout and after. Acitretin asks for one month before and three years after.
• The two numbers differ because the two compounds persist for different lengths of time. MedlinePlus says so directly about acitretin, and the matching blood donation bans, one month and three years, say it again.
• No named body has published a waiting period for a topical retinoid. MotherToBaby reports most tretinoin gone from the body in about a day, and says out loud that the one month figure attached to it is carried over from the oral isotretinoin label rather than measured.
• The AAD’s and ACOG’s ingredient lists are headed “during pregnancy”, and that is what they are. The one sentence the AAD addresses to somebody trying to become pregnant asks you to tell your obstetrician and dermatologist what you use, not to stop using it.
• The real case for acting early is the calendar. A pregnancy is dated from about two weeks before it starts, and the CDC says the earliest defects happen before you know. The reassuring half sits on the same page: MotherToBaby calls the first two weeks after conception the all or none period. ACOG asks you not to stop a prescription without speaking to your obstetric provider, and to start the folic acid a month out.

Where this came from

Every health claim on this page links to the body that published it. Nothing here comes from another blog.

Every link above was fetched and confirmed to resolve on 6 September 2026.

Truva summarises published guidance from bodies including ACOG, the FDA, the EU SCCS and the Cosmetic Ingredient Review. It has no access to your medical history and it is not a substitute for your doctor, dermatologist or midwife. This post was written by the Truva team from the sources listed above. It has not been reviewed by a clinician, and nothing in it is a diagnosis or a prescription. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding or being treated for PCOS, take the ingredient list to the person looking after you.