Pregnancy flare advice

Hello everyone. I was searching online and found an old post on here by a user named bosco123 about how she mildly flared at 18 weeks pregnant, so I searched on here to talk to her and it seems she hasn't been on since. Hoping that's good news!

So, in her post she said she had started Canasa for what seemed to be the start of a mild flare containing mucus, and some posters were recommending enemas if the Canasa didn't help after a week or so. I have never used suppositories or enemas so I was curious what exactly the enema is, and why is it better than the suppository?

Here is what I'm dealing with currently... I'm 21 weeks pregnant and a few weeks ago I started flaring. It began with my rectum seeming to be gurgling/tingling, and that lasted for a few days until I started having extremely painful BM's in the morning. I got in to see the GI that day and she started me on 25mg Prednisone, and said to taper by 5mg each week. I'm also on four Lialda per day.

My symptoms got a little worse before I felt better after about a week, then I felt more like myself for the following week. Then last Wednesday on my last day of 20mg Prednisone I started to become excessively gassy, mostly during the overnight hours. This is still happening. I wake up with such forceful gas that I feel like I will soil myself, trying to lay there and just let it out. Sometimes I run to the toilet to relieve it. In the morning, I have one BM which seems to release a small amount of mucus at first, then it continues on with brown loose stool, which is the stool that is normal for me. I go the rest of the day feeling okay except for a lot of rectal pressure, which I'm sure is due to a mix of baby pushing on me and UC symptoms. This has been happening for the past week.

I have a GI appointment tomorrow so I'm trying to go prepared. Any suggestions? Does it sound like I need to try Canasa since I'm having overnight issues? I drop down to 10mg Prednisone tomorrow which scares me since this started at 20mg. I turn 30 on Tuesday so I'm wanting to hopefully get this taken care of so I don't start the flare all over again. Want to enjoy my birthday!

Thank you all so much for you help!

Rectal medicines are the best way to treat inflammation in the distal colon, which includes the rectum and sigmoid colon. Oral meds are just not as effective in those far away places.

Canasa is a 1g suppository that will treat the rectum. Mesalamine enemas in the US are 4 g of mesalamine in a liquid suspension, and they will treat the rectum and sigmoid colon, and, if you're lucky, a portion or all of the descending colon.

Hope this is helpful! Ask for rectal meds and then stay on them to avoid further use of steroids.

If you are in the US they are very expensive. You may be able to order them from Canada if your insurance doesn't cover them well.

The enemas are available as a generic so they cost almost nothing.

As a side note, even if both you and your husband have IBD, I believe the chances are still fairly low of passing on the bad genes. Even if the bad genes are passed on the person usually doesn't develop IBD unless the correct trigger or triggers appear to start the process.

I don't know the exact stats. There have been other threads along these lines that did provide stats. While I respect anyone's personal decision on this matter I find it kind of sad that someone would purposely not have children, worried about passing on "bad genes". It is my belief that if everyone's genes were analyzed it would show that every one of us has bad genes to cancer or something else that they could pass on, not necessarily that they will pass on. If everyone felt like they didn't want to pass on their particular bad genes then the human race would cease to exist. In fact, as time goes on more and more gene mutations happen every day so I wonder if 100,00 years from now the only humans left on the planet will all be sickly cripples in one way or another. I also find it sad that if you could use a crystal ball and look ahead in the future and found out that your offspring did not inherit any bad genes and went on to be a famous person like president or something, it would be a shame if that person was never born out of fear. Unfortunately, we don't have a crystal ball and you might have a child that inherits something bad such as UC and grows up wishing that their parents had never conceived a child at all.

How UC affects offspring is not always straightforward. For example, my grandfather had UC. Neither of his two children have UC but two of his four grandchildren do. And the two grandchildren who have it aren't siblings.

Obviously there's a genetic connection but who knows why it skipped a generation? Environment? Genes from the other parent? Luck?

Anyway I wouldn't base my decision to have children on the fear of my children having UC.

Hope your flare gets better soon.