Ready to start thinking about having a baby (shhhh!) :-)

YellowFish

Me and my husband have started to talk about having a family - it's early days and I'm just starting to gather information. We probably won't start trying for another 3-6 months or so, but because I've got a lot of chemicals in my system I want to be clear about how long it will take til it's safe! One of my first port of calls will be my GP.

However, I always get the best advice on here! Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Are there any painkillers you can take whilst trying for a baby? How the hell do you manage without??!!

I've heard that pregnancy often improves RA temporarily - fingers and toes crossed for that one!

Thanks in anticipation for any advice!

Sparkys6887

How exciting!!! I really wish you luck with this :-) I know it's different what with me being a man but I had to be off sulpasalazine for a while before my Sperm morphology was back to normal. It was at least six months. What meds are you currently taking?? Maybe you could try acupuncture for pain relief. I have found that helpful in the past and some would say tht it can support pregnancy and help the body clear chemicals?!

villier

Thats lovely and I wish you well for the future, hopefully our lovely LV will come along and give you advice as she is due to have twins in a while, good luck .....Marie x

stickywicket

As villier has said, LignumVitae is currently expecting twins. You could try PMing her. Also Lucia commenced a successful 'Operation Up the Duff' some time ago and started a blog of the same name. I think it's normal to be prescribed steroids and paindullers which has to be a lot better than the soluble aspirin which was all I was allowed 37 years ago.

mike26

hi yellowfish
exciting times ahead good luck hope all goes well 4 u,
and good place to start (talk to doctor)

my youngest daughter expecting 2nd in april so looks like ill have me hands full .. mike26...

barbara12

Hello yellowfish
We do have have quite a few people that have had forum baby's has we call them and yes our LV is expecting twins..I am sure you will get lots of advice off them.
And I do wish you well for he future xx

DebraKelly

I too am thinking about starting a family, my husband and I are having appointments with doctors etc as I am currently on Meth & Sulpha which I would need to come off for a while before we tried.

However, I have also recently had a miscarrige, but it was mainily due to the fact that a) I didn't know I was pregantand b)I was on a lot of medication at the time so we are being really careful before we try properly.

I have got RA and I have heard that a lot of woman who have RA go into remission whilst they are pregant?

stickywicket

I went into remission with my first but definitely not with my second. There was no third

LignumVitae

Hello Yellowfish,

That's very exciting news! As others have told you, I'm currently the size of a small family car carrying Bubble and Squeak so to begin, I hope you get to feel small family car status too!

I was taking methotrexate and celebrex so I can only speak for those two but I worked hard with my rheumy nurse to sort it all out. If you have one of those I suggest you contact them as they can help you a lot faster than doctors do normally. I started to withdraw off the methotrexate (literally just stopping taking it rather than reducing doses), aiming to go a full six months and I used steroid injections to keep me going. Unfortunately, that bit was damned hard and I struggled to get the six weeks between jabs so I only managed a three month withdrawal. I would have liked to go longer but the harder my body struggled the less likely I was to maintain fertility so I had to make that decision and there is plenty of research backing three months as a safe period. I withdrew from the Celebrex over either three weeks or a fortnight, I forget which.

I was super lucky and got pregnant very quickly. With the blessing of my GP, rheumy nurse and midwife I use paracetamol most days but the arthritis took one look at all those female hormones and slunk off. I'm 26 weeks now and it's still slinking somewhere, muttering to itself I imagine whilst having a cigarette and plotting its revenge. I do get some painful joints but I think most pregnant women do, I am carrying two little kickers and arthritis has left damage in joints and so a bit of pain is inevitable I guess. If I had not had the luck of arthritis slinking off then I could have had steroid jabs I think but I've been lucky enough not to do that, hooray! If things go bad after the birth then that will be an option to tide me over til I resume methotrexate etc.

If you want to chat then feel free PMing me. I'll happily answer anything I can. The wonderful people on here really helped me through the worst bits and I was so desperate to tell them when I found out I was pregnant! There are tough times but you get through them because the potential prize is so great.

Love LV xx

YellowFish

Thank you LV! That's really encouraging and I'm so glad to hear you're doing well - makes me feel like the future's bright!! It's really great to hear from you.

And wow - just paracetemol?! You must be carrying two superheros in there that have kicked RA's butt!! High fives to them!!

I moved about 200 miles a few months ago so next week I'm seeing my new rheumy - and we're looking at buying our first home soon - so it's all change again! But exciting stuff!! That'll probably mean changing GP again but I think I'm going to have the conversations sooner rather than later. So far I have managed to avoid going on methotrexate - at one point we thought I wasn't going to manage without it but I hung on and things have improved steadily without it - touching every bit of wood as I type!! (Incidentally I've heard of several people who concieved whilst still taking MX and have happy, healthy, beautiful babies)

I wish you all the best!! When are you due?

Colin1

good luck to you both i cant think of anything that will give you more joy i really hope all goes well for you.
colin x

MumV

Hi, yellow fish I am the parent of a 20 year old with JIA and has been on 30 mg of Methotrexate, she is on a well spell presently and in the process of reducing, which is great for her.

What an exciting post you have started, I hope it all goes well for you, and DebreKelly, good luck and Lingum Viti, how lovely to hear you are expecting twins.

I am constantly trying to educate myself about living with Arthritis, and through reading everyone's news really helps me, support and prepare to support my daughter. I don't jump the gun or even assume that one day she will want to start a family, it is and will be entirely her choice, however this is the one topic, sorry to call it that it sounds so cold, that I have had niggles about, would she be able to?

Any leaflets I have read have always been about RA and none about Agressive JIA and I have always latched onto that. Stickywicket has shared with me/forum she was diagnosed with RA at 15, and went on to have 2 children and now a grandchild and this in itself gave me hope instead of despair. My daughter was diagnosed aroun 13/14 so a similar age, and I have found sticky wickets, kind and straightforward replies helpful.

Emotions run riot as a parent, and for that I do apologise, all you lovely people are so brave, thank you so much for sharing.

So can I ask this question, do you think it will be the same for a young woman with JIA as a young woman with RA if she wishes to start a family? The treatment appears to be on a par.

I hope my questions don't take away from the excitement of this lovely thread started by yellow fish, positive wishes for you and lots of luck.

Kind regards MumV

LignumVitae

Yellowfish- just paracetamol! It isn't always easy but it does help enough for me to get by with heat packs etc. the other thing I did was see the withdrawal period as a positive (which wasn't always at easy) and use it to get as healthy as I could through food and exercise and taking loads of folic acid. I took about 4 a day because meth strips it from your system but I carried on doing that once I was pregnant which was a bit of a blessing really as it meant that the two dancing braves had plenty of the stuff which, had I not been doing that, they might not on one a day!

MumV - don't apologise for asking questions, it's what we are here for. I have an inflammatory arthritis so not JIA but so far as all the reading I did before I got pregnant suggests, your daughter should be able to become pregnant, she will have to withdraw off her meds to do it safely but it is possible and arthritis tends not to affect your fertility, hope that helps you. What a lovely caring mummy you are to be wanting to find these things out for her! That kind of support is lovely and reassuring to us patients. My mum always assumed I'd be infertile (I know, she told my friend) and never bothered to ask! I think I gave her the shock of her life when I told her I was and I'm still not sure she has come to terms with twins!

LV xx

MumV

LignumVitae,


What a lovely kind, reply and very much appreciated. My daughter will probably kill me asking these questions :roll: , but I am so glad I have and thank you to you for sharing your experiences...perhaps I should talk to your mum, I don't know why as a parent initially we latch onto all the negatives of medication and disease and allow it to burn a hole in our minds, and say things like your mum did which are unfounded and untrue, I am probably guilty of that.....we are just scared, and want our children to have choices in life I guess.......I apologise on behalf of parents and vow to learn from your wonderful example....

As you grow into young adults, we should just ask. Thank you for that.


Your mum will love it when the twins arrive, and forget the shock!! there will always be one to cuddle!!

Keep as well as you can, you are looking after yourself so well, those twins will be chasing each other round the room before you know it!!


Exciting times ahead Kind regards MumV, and thank you again