I am the creator of the aforementioned website. Thanks Julie and Melissa for the references. What Eileen, Melissa and Emilee all said can be true. What has been discovered in research is that the current trend of your health is unaffected by a pregnancy if your disease is in the "mild" or "moderate" categories. If your health directly before pregnancy is steady and on a plateau, you will be at a similar level of health postpartum. Likewise, if your pre-pregnancy health is in a decline, your level of health will be lower after pregnancy than before. The same follows for an increase in health. You will find details and links to the research on this information on the Pregnancy and Specific Concerns of Pregnancy pages. I have been fortunate that my health has actually improved since becoming pregnant and giving birth - even with the daily demands of raising a now-three-year-old and working part-time. My weight is up from prepregnancy. I have fewer hospitalizations and have had no kidney infections or kidney stones since my daughters birth. I also have fewer sinus infections and haven't required a sinus surgery in over two-years, a first for me. There is MUCH value in assessing your current health. Not just in looking at your lung function, though this is an important aspect of it, but evaluating your nutritional status, your weight, and the frequency of infections and tune-ups. It is also helpful to look at how you address illnesses. There are some medications that are less safe or unsafe during pregnancy and/or breastfeeding, so it is helpful to begin looking at alternatives. I have found it important in my own life not just to look at my blood-vitamin or -mineral levels, but in how I acquire those nutrients. It is possible to actually use up nutrients in order to acquire others based on the form and foods from which they come. For example, if you eat difficult to digest foods with lots of extra processing-type stuff included (like in canned and boxed foods), you may need to eat quite a few more calories a day because of how many calories your body burns to break down and assimilate the foods you are eating. If you alter your diet tp include easier to digest, purer foods, you may find that you require fewer calories because your body doesn't work so hard to use what you've eaten. This has proved true for me. I eat about 3/4 of what I ate prepregnancy, but my weight is up and has remained steady for the last 3 years. Having CF, it is easy to feel out of control of your body, and sometimes that is absolutely the case. But, because pregnancy is a healthy, natural phase in a woman's life, it is very different from what we are used to dealing with. It quite often (though, as Emilee points out, there are exceptions) goes very well. I have a friend with CF who gave birth to twins 20 years ago when she was about 30. Her doctor was ecstatic about her pregnancy and told her that he wished she could stay pregnant all the time because of how it benefitted her health! She successfully breastfed both babies for a few months as well!We've lost touch with her in the last couple of years, but Melissa and I knew a woman with CF who visited this site who had experienced two pregnancies. Both were IVF, I believe. But, the first pregnancy resulted in a single baby and the second was triplets!I think another important thing to evaluate is your clinic. There are pros and cons of both a clinic with experience with CF women having babies and a clinic without experience. In my previous clinic, where I was seen during my pregnancy, I was the first. It was tough because they didn't have much information to offer me and much of it was out-dated - they'd never had a reason to keep up on the subject, but it was flexible in that because there were no previous experiences, there were few preconceived ideas about how to handle it. I had a lot of freedom to dictate my care or at least lead. In my current clinic there are numerous parents with CF (quite a few women and some men). The combination of their previous experiences and this doctor's method/personality mean less personal freedom in my care should I get pregnant here. But, it also means that they are more up-to-date on research and are more knowledgeable than my previous one. You MUST be educated. You know your body better than anyone. You know when something doesn't feel right or when something feels normal. You are your and your baby's best advocate. But, you cannot advocate for the very best care and options available if you do not know what the research says and what choices you have. In my opinion, you must be an equal with your doctor and anyone else on your CF team. You have information and knowledge about your body on a daily basis that they do not. They have professional experience and training and technology that you do not. You must work together so that you can get the best care. No doctor has the time to spend investigating one patient's individual case and needs the way the patient does. Do not be afraid to hunt down information, copy things off, take papers to clinic and ask questions. You also at any time have the right to suggest certain treatments or refuse them. Becoming an expert in your own care has MANY benefits for your health that will then benefit your baby (while the baby is in your body and then as you are mothering in the following years). As you learn to advocate for yourself, you learn how to advocate for your child. As a mother, you will use that often! Feel free to email me from here or MurrensNatureMama if you have any specific question that I can help you with.
