Healthy eggs?

So I am 35 and I didn't believe in the biological clock but it started ticking 3 years ago and it hasn't stopped.

BUT I have Lyme disease and co-infections and I just want to know if there is any way that my eggs are not infected. I don't know how to test for infection. Has anyone dealt with this?

I know that I can't actually go through with a pregnancy because of severe hormonal depression (I've dealt with severe depression in the past and I am the prime target for depression in pregnancy and post-partum.)

So that's a whole other issue but I wonder if my eggs are all sick :(

I would imagine that they are because everything is infected with this illness.

Has anyone had this type of testing done? Just curious.

Thanks for reading.

I don't know if they would be or not. Lyme is passed through the placenta, and through breast milk - but I don't know if they have done any testing on unfertilized eggs.

There are some on here who have used a certain antibiotic while pregnant and had the cord blood tested. Maybe they will see this and give you more detail.

Congrats on that, Kayaklove!!!

The abx that the others are thinking of is Ammoxicillin. We've had a Moderator (opugirl) that got pregnant shortly after healing from Lyme and when the baby was born they had the cord blood tested and it came back clean.

Thanks everyone. I have a history of severe depression so I am pretty darn sure I'd have serious postpartum.

I really hope I don't offend anyone here but I got pregnant (not planned and didn't even think I could get pregnant) and was MAJORLY depressed,anxious and could not sleep. It was horrendous. I just thought it was severe PMS.

Once I found out I was pregnant I terminated the pregnancy a week later. It was my first pregnancy. The way I looked at it was there really wasn't another option for me. With the medications I'm on the baby would have developmental problems, Lyme, etc, etc. And I kind of think maybe the pregnancy would have killed me because it caused suicidal thoughts and desperate hopelessness. It was a first trimester abortion (8 weeks).

I was just curious about getting the eggs checked because I thought of the surrogate option (didn't even occur to me about the surrogate getting sick).

Realistically I know I'm not going to have children (I still have to finish school and get my career started and support myself). But since I realized that I could get pregnant it made me reflect on the issue even more.

It is good to know that some have had healthy children. I find that interesting.

So I can say that not all women with Lyme feel great during pregnancy. But I have heard that some do. A lot of women don't talk about feeling depressed throughout their pregnancy because there is a stigma. I think we often idealize how wonderful women feel during their pregnancy that to say the contrary is kind of shameful in a way (that's what I think anyway.)

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Post Edited (kayaklove) : 7/29/2015 1:38:49 PM (GMT-6)

Here's my story:

I have clinical depression that runs on my family. My grandmother was schizophrenic and they did a lobotomy which unfortunately didn't fix the schizophrenia. My grandfather (her husband) committed suicide when my mother was 15. My mother has had major depression as long as I remember Several times she checked in and an inpatient. At that time my sister was having issues and was involuntarily committed to a youth psych ward (thus my mother's nervous breakdown).

I my self have had depression, but who having pain and all it's friends since the age of 16 wouldn't be depressed. The medical community does have an answer for the question of what came first the depression or the chronic illness.

My diagnosis was Fibromyalgia which I didn't get until after my youngest was born before that it was tension headaches, bursitis, skin contact allergies and so on.

I had two pregnancies. My daughter is 23 and my son 15. I am one of those people who had no symptoms during pregnancy. I also met many people through Fibro support groups both in person and online and just about every had no symptoms from the fibromyalgia during pregnancy.

Now that doesn't mean I had good pregnancies. I was miserable everyday of both f my pregnancies. With my daughter, we had decided that financially we could pay day care and other expenses so I went off birth control. Eleven days later I walked into the cafeteria at work and almost threw up. They had Chinese food that day. I went for testing (not really any reliable home pregnancies at the time) but it was negative. I had to wait two more weeks for a positive test.

All through that pregnancy I had issues. Nothing wrong with my daughter just pregnancy things. I had Sciatica so bad that my husband had to drop me off at the door near and elevator so I didn't have to climb stairs. I would go to my office and my boss arranged a few people to fetch things for me when I needed them. I even had meetings with higher ups in my office.

Before I got pregnant, I had was being treated at the best headache clinic in Massachusetts. One of the things I did as a part of treatment was Group Therapy. I'll never forget when I mentioned I was pregnant one of the women said "Oh, I'm so sorry" I said I wasn't and she could never wrap her head around the fact that even though I was sick, I wanted the baby. That's not a judgement on you. We each have different life stories. I had reached the point in my treatment where I thought I had control of the "tension headaches". Using biofeedback and the group therapy, I was somewhat able to reduce the headaches.

I didn't know it at the time but other things that seemed unconnected to the headaches subsided. So I was once of those that had a remission during pregnancy. But sleeping with a 8 pound baby sucked. She would sit against my sciatic nerve and I couldn't get her to move. Like everyone when I was moving she slept and when I tried to sleep she decided to do her gymnastics routines.

My son is 15 and at the time he was born I was really sick. I stopped working when he was 3. But that pregnancy was terrible too. No Fibromyalgia symptoms, but lots of pregnancy ones. I had gestation diabetes. They put me on a diet and I starved to death. I was unable to deliver him naturally, so Operating Room here we come. It turned out he was 10 lbs 2 oz. There was stunned silence in the OR. He actually gained weight in the hospital. I had nursed both kids and he was a champ right away.

So my symptoms started at 18. I was 29 when my daughter was born. Thirty-seven when my son was born. Nursed my daughter until she was 7 months (I produced way more milk that she could drink and I froze several months worth) and my son for 4 months. So not only were they exposed during the pregnancy, but I gave them a lot more opportunities to become infected.

So about 2 weeks ago I got my results back. Positive, yeah for me but not so good from my kids. My son is symptomatic and my daughter isn't. They had both had chronic ear infections and strep when they were younger. Interestingly, they both had growth issues which resolved (one with thyroid meds, the other growth hormones).

After lots of discussion with the folks on the forum and my husband, we are getting both kids tested. Surprisingly, my daughter agreed to it. Actually, I asked her to take OLE for a month before getting tested. She wanted to make sure that it wouldn't interfere with work. I'm going to start her off slow and make sure it doesn't make her exhausted (which was what happened to me). My son is doing fine on it but I am starting him really slow. His pediatrician agreed that if my test was positive he should be tested too. We agreed to wait for the results and then figure out how to treat him if it comes back positive.

I have to say I had a very difficult day when I got my results back. I was very depressed because I have been sick for more than 35 years and it got caught 6 months ago because my eye doctor asked me if I had ever been tested for Lyme. I was also very down about my son.

He has had symptoms all of his life. Fifteen years worth. The worst of which was Hulk like rages (as a member of the forum phrased it) that I thought were developmental until a couple of months ago when it hit me that they were still occurring but less frequently. He also has fine motor deficits in his hand that cause handwriting to be exhausting and completely illegible. Even he can't read it. I had the idea the other day that if he tests positive and he's treated, its possible that his motor functions might return to normal. I am emphasizing might. We've learned to work around it but it would be nice to fix it especially since it's likely a result of something I had a hand in.

If I knew I had lyme at the time I got pregnant, I don't what my decision would be. We all change and grow over time based on our life experiences. For a very long time until the Lyme beat me down totally, I pushed through everything and that included pregnancy and parenting.

The world would be a different place without my children, for me and everyone whose lives they touch. Does that mean your decision was wrong? No, absolutely not. At each moment in life we have to decide what is right for us and by extension our families. If you feel too sick to take care of yourself, pregnancy, childbirth and parenting will suck more energy out of you.

It sounds like you want children if you can get yourself well, so put yourself first. Get better and after that reevaluate. No here is going to judge you harshly.

I wish you good luck and good health,
Kim