Considering having a child, but am worried.

I believe it is pretty safe for people with UC to have children, the chance of passing on the UC is another issue. As a few of us have stated in other posts, when you have a child, you're accepting that the child may have some kind of health problem. It could be UC, it could be something else but hopefully they are healthy. You never know what you're going to get but the chances of having a child with UC is supposed to be about 15%. There are many parents here, some with children with UC and some with children without UC. I think even if you asked the parents of the youngest children with a UC diagnosis if they had any regrets they would say that they don't. I will not have children, partly because of UC but not entirely.

I do think genetics is a factor. Most people under the age of 45 don't have any major illnesses or diseases.

I was concerned about passing on illnesses (one of my sisters is bipolar, schizophrenic, and obsessive compulsive); so I looked for someone who was genetically very different from me. Luckily, I met and fell in love with someone who was genetically very different from me and my kids are beautiful, highly intelligent, and have no mental diseases.

the way I see it, the chances are slim of passing on the disease when you have no idea how you got it!

I've had two children since being diagnosed and it was a hard decision.  I researched, I agonized, I researched some more. Yes my kids have a higher probability of getting the disease compared to the general public because of me, but there's also still a high percentage that they won't. I have three sisters and out of the four of us, I'm the only one with UC. 

 

I also think that because of my awareness of the disease and more specifically, what triggers it, I'm more likely than the general public to take action to ensure that my children are exposed to as few UC triggers as possible. So hopefully that somewhat combats the higher genetic probability of having the disease.

 

Just my opinion!

We never had children and are somewhat relieved as not to have risked passing on any autoimmune disorders or any of our other potential genetic health issues. I don't think we could have handled seeing our child being afflicted but there are certainly no guarantees it would happen. Either way best of luck to you both.

This is the most selfish bunch of people ever seen on these forums. I am a technically a victim of parents with GI diseases. Though they may not have been aware of their issues at the time, there is a clear link. Between them there is IBS, Colitis, Diverticulitis, etc... I would have appreciated them not having me and saving me from this hell. Stop just thinking about yourself and think about what will happen when your children are living life in hell daily and they could have been spared had it not been for your selfishness. Adoption is not that frick'n bad for crying out loud. Healthy kids need good homes.

(can you tell that I'm really irritated with what I'm reading? )


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Crohn's for 15 years (since 12 y/o), currently on 6-MP, digestive enzymes, Dr. Ohirra
Tried: every blend of mesolamine under the sun, Levsin,

I am going to be radical in my opinion. I do not intend to scare you, just my thoughts.

My mother 'had' ulcerative colitis and I was diagnosed after 6 month of our son's birth. Had I got the diagnosis before DW's conception, we would not have gone for a child.

Fast forward 2 years, DS got a diagnosis of Autism (there is a weak link between IBD and Autism) and we decided we will not have another child. We have been toying with an idea of adopting a child since DW conceived with DS but now that we are in the US on a visa, we are not allowed to adopt a child. So no more children for us.

Am we happy about the decision? absolutely not. So why did we take this decision?
- UC research and unscientific data tends to point at a genetic link with UC. Although UC is not as bad as say, any congenital birth defect. I do not want to have a child knowing there is a good chance that the kid will also have UC. I do not want my child to live through the hell of pain that I go through quite often. Trust me, if your child develops UC, you will curse yourself all the time (My mom does for my UC and I do it for my son's autism.)
- Since DS already has autism, there is a 50-50 chance that second child may also have autism. If its a boy, the chances are more. And we are not into abortion business (No, I do not support anti-abortion drives or political parties. It just doesn't feel right and the suffering DW will have to go through, emotionally and physically). Plus, the burden that we may end up putting on a society by bringing child with special needs in the society is just not acceptable.

I can not comment on probability of adopted child developing any kind of illness but you are adopting a kid who does not have any parental support and is already present in this world. You are not bringing any new life to this world (that you know could end up with some ailment).

I guess, at a times we do need to think using brain than the heart. We REALLY want a second child but we can not leave US and unless we leave US, we will not able to adopt a child.

First off, there is no guarantee that someone with UC (or Crohns) will have a child with the disease. In fact, chances are more than likely that you won't. Second, if you look at people's genes in depth you will find that absolutely everyone has genetic defects in their genes that they can pass on to their children. There's only one real solution: Make sure that absolutely no one ever has any children and let the species (us) all die off. Then nobody will have to worry about inheriting a bad disease.

I'm going to be radical in my opinion also: I'm sorry, but refusing to have a child in case you 'pass' on Crohn's or UC is dumb. There is no other way I feel about it. If my brother had operated according to that reasoning, my two nephews wouldn't exist, since he has Crohn's - milder than mine, but still Crohn's.

I'm not in any position to start a family, to put it mildly, but I would not let my Crohn's stop me from having children if I was. Why? Well,

1) There is at least a 95% chance a child of mine will not have Crohn's or UC. For every 20 children born to a parent with Crohn's, 19 of them won't get IBD.

2) I learned about a friend of mine today being diagnosed with a brain tumour. There are other diseases in existence besides IBD. Some of them are even worse than IBD. What are you gonna do if your kid gets one of those non-IBD diseases? Commit hari-kiri for having given birth to the unlucky kid?

3) Kids often take things like illness and disability amazingly well. Absolutely nobody would wish it upon them, but for them it is not necessarily the end of the world.

4) New treatments are on the way for IBD, I am convinced of it, as long as the zombie or robot apocalypse doesn't interrupt medical research. Could be 10 or 50 years from now, but I think at the moment we are in the dark ages when it comes to IBD and people will look back with amazement at some of the things we did to try and treat it.

Snake eyes!

First off, there is a 10- to 15- fold increased risk that if one parent has an IBD (either CD or UC) that their offspring may develop either IBD (just so you know C_G_K, that just because this is the UC forum, it doesn't change the fact that either form of IBD can be passed on).

Secondly, I became sick with my IBD about a yr and 4months AFTER having my first baby and BEFORE my mom got sick with her UC so we didn't even know IBD was in our family and had never heard of it...yeah, my mom got sick with her UC AFTER I got sick with my CD...it's not all black and white like everyone makes it out to be...everyone assumes that if they're gonna get an IBD then their parent or some other older family member will be sick with it first before they are, it doesn't work that way, it's one thing being predisposed to getting either form of IBD, it's another for it to be triggered and not everyone gets theirs at a young age (hence my own family history of me getting it at 23 and my mom getting it in her late 60's).

pb4 said...
First off, there is a 10- to 15- fold increased risk that if one parent has an IBD (either CD or UC) that their offspring may develop either IBD (just so you know C_G_K, that just because this is the UC forum, it doesn't change the fact that either form of IBD can be passed on).

Dr. Rioux was confounding UC and Crohn's by lumping them together under "IBD" in his study. Crohn's has 5 to 10x greater heritability than UC (depending on the study), although there is some gray area between the two diseases in a small percentage of cases.

From:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3396969

said...
The proband concordance rate among monozygotic twins was 6.3% for ulcerative colitis and 58.3% for Crohn's disease. Thus heredity as an aetiological factor is stronger in Crohn's disease than in ulcerative colitis.

What this means is in only 6.3% of cases, if one identical twin gets U.C., the other will also. For Crohn's that number was almost 60%. What applies to Crohn's does not apply to U.C. The numbers for heritability are totally different as you can see, similarities between the disease and gray area cases notwithstanding.

Post Edited (C_G_K) : 2/7/2013 10:11:39 PM (GMT-7)