There are hardly any studies on IPL in pregnancy. However IPL is generally a surface laser treatment, with hardly any deeper penetrative effect so it’s unlikely to cause any fetal effect.
To put it in perspective, fetal congenital abnormalities has a background rate of about 3% in the general population and most other pregnancy complications are due to underlying medical illness in the mum eg. uncontrolled diabetes, hypertension, obesity.
The likelihood of external factors on baby are usually minuscule in normal circumstances unless for eg. the mum drinks or smokes or uses drugs heavily.
Having said that issues like bleeding, miscarriage are more common in first trimester, so we would suggest to avoid unnecessary treatments in the first trimester or to use alternative methods of hair removal … of which there are many …
But no there is no proven link between the use of IPL and fetal effect in pregnancy.
Hope that helps!!
