When this story first broke on Wednesday, headlines screamed that antidepressants could cause birth defects. A day later, the two big studies conducted by Boston University (with funding from GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Paxil) and the CDC say, yeah, the pills can do something, but not as much as everyone was saying, and only on a tiny population of those tested.

So here's a piece of the Associated Press Story to sort it all out:

BOSTON - Newborns face little risk of birth defects from antidepressants taken by many women early in pregnancy, say the reassuring findings of the two biggest studies of this controversial link. The research focuses on the class of drugs chosen most often for depression and anxiety, including the brands Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft.

Paxil carries a warning of possible heart defects in newborns, and experts don't expect the new research to change that. However, they find the new studies comforting for women struggling with depression.

The possibility of birth defects from antidepressants has put doctors and patients in a tricky quandary. Birth defects obviously hurt newborns, but depressed mothers who can't give proper care also endanger their babies.

"Yeah, there's a risk, but the risk overall is probably pretty small," said Dr. Susan Ramin, obstetrics chairman at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, who was familiar with the findings.

The two studies — one from the federal Centers for Disease Control and the other from Boston University — use more cases of birth defects than previous research to consider links between the abnormalities and SSRIs. The Boston University study was funded partly by the National Institutes of Health and Paxil maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC.

Together, the two studies looked at 19,471 newborns with birth defects and 9,952 without them. Then they considered what SSRIs the mothers in both groups took during the first three months of pregnancy and mapped the patterns of birth defects.