Lyme and pregnancy?!

We aren't exactly sure when I got Lyme disease. I had a sudden onset of some crazy symptoms (syncope, joint problems, headaches) in high school. We treated each symptom separately.

While pregnant with my second (10 years later), I discovered a deer tick on me (not engorged). I was able to remove it, went on a month of amoxicillin, and got a negative blood test. I had a bunch of symptoms that I chalked up to being a pregnant mom with a 15 month old.

I had gone to the doctors every six months from then on. I had lots of random symptoms but nothing overwhelming until this summer. The boughts of pain, fatigue, anxiety, paralysis, etc were too much to explain simply. I got my diagnosis in July.

My son, whom I was pregnant with is healthy and smart! He has never had a problem with weight or anything (though my first did). But over the last three months, my son has begun complaining about his eyes. And there have been a handful of times where he grabs his knee in pain and cries "my knee, my knee". He is not yet 2 so I can't question him on symptoms or anything.

I made an appointment for him with my homeopathic lyme doctor in a month. We will know immediately whether he has it. But curious to know whether others have had these concerns?

In Christ Alone -
I know when I was bitten by the tick and when my symptoms started to show up. I was 11 and my symptoms started up within the next 5 weeks or so and were on and off for the next 24 years and counting. I had symptoms before during and after my pregnancy. My only living child is my daughter who is my 2nd of 4 kids. My others mysteriously didn't make it at various stages of pregnancy from late 3rd trimester, late 2nd trimester and late 1st trimester. I have worried about my daughter as she was born coombs positive (when the mom's blood crosses over through the cord or placenta and impacts the baby). I'm O neg and she's A positive. I had the Rhogam shots throughout but that protects the mom from having the baby's antibodies attack. As a result, my antibiodies started to attack her body. The result is a lot of jaundice.

I've read that many babies born by a mom who is known to have lyme often have jaundice due to more then just lack of nutrients from insufficient breast feeding. I've also read that many who died after birth had jaundice. So with an almost 4 year old I feel pretty lucky that she made it through the rough parts. She was born at a healthy birth weight but struggled to put on weight. She was 8lbs 3 oz but only hit 16lbs 8 oz at the year mark. Apparently babies are supposed to triple their birth weight in the first year.

Now I only found out that I had lyme a little less then a year ago. I just thought that I had fibro all of these years and that was what was flaring during and after the pregnancy. As soon as I found out what was going on with my body it made me worry about my daughter. She has life threatening food allergies and after growing out of two she had a massive reaction to a new one that was something that she had previously eaten. Food allergies don't exist in our family and food allergies are due to an immune system that is reading things incorrectly. So if lyme effects your immune system, then maybe she has lyme. I worry because she walked late - 17 months. Her speech has been behind but she is seriously one of the brightest kids in her class. When she does talk you wonder how she got that. She misses the local cut off for kindergarden by 15 days here but her preschool keeps on pushing her ahead. So this year she is with the kids who will go to kindergarten next year and she can spell, read a little and write her letters and numbers. She's ahead of her group of kids so I can't say she's too behind! She's clumsy but so is my husband. She bruises a lot but I see her run and jump and land on her shins as if nothing is wrong. I've often wondered if she can accurately see since I've watched her walk into trees and poles and signs (or almost does if we don't yell at her to watch out).

So I happen to live in an area where there are quite a few LLMDs here. Some of the big ones live nearby. My doc is seeing my daughter as well. She didn't test positive for lyme but he told me that he didn't expect it because if she had lyme disease, it has had almost 4 years to hide. She often says things like 'my back is hurting' or something is too loud. I have no idea if she's just being a kid, trying to repeat some of what she sees (my husband complaining of his bad back), or if this is lyme. Because we don't know, we are just working on building up her immune system. My LLMD believes that if we build up her immune system and help it work the best it can that maybe she can outgrow her food allergies and if she has lyme her immune system will help her fight it on her own. She's been treated for the past 4 months and she's doing well.

I always wonder. I hope she's o.k. as mommy guilt has gotten the best of my many times when I think that I could have given this to her. I think that she's lucky because she has two parents who are aware of what to look for and she has an LLMD to help us out. I had a mom who fought for me but we just couldn't find a good doc to help me out. Keep us posted how everything goes!

YES! I found out that I have Lyme after having my daughter, my second child. She is 15 months and my son is 6 yrs. old. I have no idea when I got it, but have had some odd symptoms and what seemed like a lot of fatigue for many yrs. I got really sick w/ it during my pregnancy, even sicker after delivery, and found out about 2 months ago that it's Lyme.
I have been very concerned for the kids. Neither of them have any health problems at all though. There are a couple of little things w/ my son that worry me - he seems tired frequently and still sometimes asks to take a nap, a couple of weeks ago he told me that it felt like his left arm and leg were "falling asleep" and last week he told me his neck hurt (but we were at an amusement park all day). I'm definitely overly sensitive to these things now. I have decided to pursue testing for both of them and then go from there. It's really sad and hard to think about me passing this on to them. However, it's good that we know about Lyme and have access to treatment right away. We can watch for signs and treat early on if needed and then they, more than likely, won't become as ill as we have!

Hey Penny Pru -
Thanks for all of the info from your doc. I need to add probiotics (she gets some in her coconut milk yogurt and kefir) but my daughter does Transfer Factor, Fish Oil and a Magnesium/Calcium with Vit D3 supplement. She has been doing pretty well but she is my only child so I often wonder about if things are normal for kids or if things she is complaining about could be lyme. I should have started this by saying, I am so sorry for the loss of your twins. That had to be so tough. I can't imagine what that was like. You are so strong. I struggled with loosing my son who was stillborn. He was my first. After autopsies and tons of testing on all three of us, we never found anything wrong. I'm sorry that you had to go through this.

As for my daughter's allergies, we did an extended vaccine schedule, I chose which I wanted in which order and was very specific about it all. She hasn't gotten all of her vaccines yet which I'm happy about. We've spread them out over 5 years. She is not allergic to peanuts. I could tell early on that she was having issues with dairy and egg. It started when I first introduced those solids to her. She then had massive reactions to sesame (3x before we could figure out what it was that was creating issues - the third reaction was the worst). This past January she was food challenged for dairy and out grew that. Then in June she was challenged for egg and out grew that. We figured we were left with just sesame. Then my husband gave her a 1/4 of a cashew and she had hives, swollen eyes and projectile vommiting non stop. She had eaten cashews before on multiple occasions but somehow this time it was an issue. After blood tests and a skin test she came back extremely allergic for cashew. That means that now all tree nuts are out. Because we didn't do dairy and I was anti soy, she grew up on unsweetened almond milk. Now she isn't allowed to drink it. Hard to tell a kid that she has to give up almond milk because it may make her sick. Just hoping that her immune system will calm down and that she can outgrow all food allergies. On the plus side, due to her food allergies, we can eat almost no processed foods so we eat REALLY healthy and she loves her veggies and fruits.

Good thought on the vaccines. I wonder too about a connection. So many are also grown in egg whites and so many kids have issues with eggs too. It is crazy once you know what the vaccines are made of and how they are grown. I bought Dr. Sear's 'The Vaccine Book' at the urging of my pediatrician. It has tons of information and when you see how many animal proteins are used to create or grow a vaccine, it's amazing.

Mystery Illness, keep us posted about your children if you wouldn't mind. I know that I'm curious and will continue pursuing things with my daughter as well. I'd be glad to share what I learn from my doc.

Hey PennyPru -
I often wonder what was harder, loosing a child (in my case multiple perfectly healthy pregnancies) or going through lyme. I'd not wish either of these things on anyone and to know that I was dealing with both simultaneously probably made it harder. My anxiety peaked after my third loss. Lumps appeared in my stomach, breast tissue and arms. I got so tired. My cycles got really off for the first time in 10+ years. My pains were through the roof. A floater appeared that hasn't gone away. In general, all of my symptoms peaked and I was so sad. Plus, with the anxiety piece I was convinced that since there had been multiple autopsies and 1000s of tests for me and my husband, that medical doctors must not know what I'm going through and if they can't figure things out, what if I have cancer? What if I have some disease that you can't cure. Since we didn't know what happened with the pregnancies, I figured that we didn't know what was going on with me and how much longer I'd be around. It was SO tough to just put a smile on each day for my daughter.

The amazing thing is that after starting some abx and getting through some amazingly tough herxes, I my anxiety almost disappeared. It still rears it's head from time to time when I'm really feeling very sick but in general it is way better then before.

As for supplements, we are using Integrated Theraputic Mag/Cal with D and a few others I can look up if you'd like. It's a variety. We have a great compounding pharmacy here so I can get most of what I need there. I'll have to check yours out.

Oh and the Coconut Kefir is dairy free but there is a diary based one too. It has over 10 different stains or probiotics and in large quantities. The Coconut one is from So Delicious. It's pretty tasty. You can ad some fresh fruits and blend and make a smoothie. As for the flu, we are trying GunaFlu this year. It's a homeopathic solution where we take one vile of little beads each week throughout flu season. I've never used it but my doc says it's safe for the whole family. I think that most people use it once they've gotten the flu to get rid of it quickly. My doc says that by taking it every week we won't be immune to the flu but if we get it, it should be mild. We'll see how it goes. Fingers crossed.

Have a great week!