Pregnancy

I was dx'ed shortly after my second son was born.

My niece has Crohn's and with each of her pregnancies she felt great while pregnant only to have symptoms return after the birth.

My sister went into a horrible flare while pregnant which resulted in a premature birth of her son (at 27 weeks) and surgery for her (j pouch). That was a really scary time but all ended well. My nephew is now 6 feet tall and my sis has done great minus her colon these past 23 years.

I think it's another one of those things that can go either way depending on the person. I hope more people take your poll....it would be interesting to see the differences. My niece wants to have another baby and was just saying the other day how great she felt while pregnant. Hopefully that will happen again for her and her CD will not flare.

I was never pregnant but still developed UC when I was 17.

My OB told me that if you have UC, often it is better in pregnancy because your body "turns down" your immune system so that it wont attack the fetus. That was little solace to me while UC was kicking my butt during pregnancy. I got into an awful flare, which a year later, I cannot get out of. I think the hormones had something to do with it, but all my doctors tell me that it was a mere coincidence.

I was in remission while I was pregnant (I have a 9 year old). No symptoms and didn't have to take any UC meds. I started flaring when he was about 6 weeks old.

I can't really pick one of the answers to your poll. I think I developed UC during my first pregnancy, but it never got bad enough that I thought anything was wrong. However, looking back, I was never constipated (most pregnant women are) and my son was born 3 weeks early w/o any prior complications. Then about 4 weeks after he was born, all hell broke loose. I was finally diagnosed when he was 3.5 months old.

Then during my second pregnancy/post-partum period, I was fine. However, I was also on meds the entire time.

And yes, from what literature I've read, 1/3 of women get better, 1/3 of women get worse, and 1/3 of women stay the same when they're pregnant.

I shortly developed UC after the birth of my son. I was in a horrendous flare when I became pregnant with my daughter. After the first tri-mester, my UC went into remission but I flared approximately 6 month after I had her.

I know, at least for me, my hormones played a big part in flaring.

notsosickly girl, I don't think it is as simple as pregnancy hormones. The whole immune system changes during pregnancy, too, plus the way your body digests food, how much blood your body makes, how much fluid your body stores, etc. etc.

Most OBs say that with autoimmune diseases one of three things happen during pregnancy - you get better, you get worse or you have no change.

Well as for me, i had bowel issues for a few years before getting pregnant but i brushed them off as IBS. Then i had a mini flare during the first trimester, i thought at the time it was just my body adjusting to the hormones etc. Then i had a major flare about 3 weeks after i gave birth. Like hellish!!! Then i was admitted to hospit and dx.

Vangirl, yes, I got out of my flare and yes, I went on to have another baby. I did not flare after the second baby, but I was on maintenance meds all during pregnancy and after with my second baby. I wasn't diagnosed until after my first baby was born, so was obviously not on meds during pregnancy and in the immediate post partum period.

I went into pregnancy mostly in remission and felt really fantastic throughout the 9 months. All hell broke loose after having my daughter and I flared violently for the next 2.5 years. It was a nightmare. When I finally got my UC under control I had this insane urge to have another child and my entire family begged me to not ever go through that again.

It has really broken my heart to not have a second child, but I don't think I could survive another flare like that--and I really don't think my marriage could survive it either. Trying to care for a small child that whole time was unbelievably hard. My husband and I pretty much have PTSD from those years.

The interesting thing is that no medical professional warned me this could happen after pregnancy. I was told women sometimes flare during, but there was no post-partum warning from my GI, my regular doctor or the midwives/OB/Gyn.

Pregnancy put me into FULL REMISSION!

It was glorious--I did take a lot of Pentasa during my pregnancy, but I barfed it up or skipped it half the time with no ill effects. And I was able to quit using topicals--I was dependent on mesalamine enemas prior to pregnancy and still had symptoms that waxed/waned depending on where I was in my menstrual cycle.

Unfortunately, having a baby did not quell my disease. I was fine for quite some time after I gave birth, but I had mastitis a lot and took antibiotics frequently. Then went through a very stressful period and BAM! I started bleeding last December (circa 20 months postpartum) and never stopped until my colectomy in October (so, 10 months of flaring).

TBH I had alot of extraintestinal issues prior to bleeding (constant mouth ulcers, fatigue, generally feeling like crap/flu-like all the time) so my immune system had been "gearing up" for this flare for about a year.

I breastfed through all of it and finally weaned in September a few weeks prior to my colectomy. In case anyone was wondering--breastfeeding apparently does not put IBD into remission the way pregnancy does.