My Journey With Crohn’s Part 3: Pregnancies

Read the story of one mom and her journey with Crohn’s (a form of irritable bowel disease) through multiple hospitalizations over a decade.

Now that you’ve heard all about how where it all began and how I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, I want to share what it’s like being pregnant with Crohn’s Disease.

Make sure you read Part 1 and Part 2 of my story!

Pregnancy and Crohn’s

Being pregnant with Crohn’s is like gambling. You’ll either stay the exact same you were, go into great remission, or flare. And it’s an equal chance for all three.

I’ve had three full-term pregnancies (and five miscarriages, but that’s a story for another time). And each of my pregnancies was very different with regards to my Crohn’s (although in all three, I struggled with antepartum depression).

When I became pregnant with our oldest, I experienced hyperemesis gravidarum. Imagine morning sickness, but about 100 times worse. Nonstop. The entire pregnancy.

The dehydration and lack of calories caused my Crohn’s to flare, which only made things worse. I ended up having to go to the hospital every single day for six months to get IV fluids and nutrition.

Things stabilized somewhat when I was about 7 months along. By that, I mean I was able to keep down Slim Fast shakes. My husband graduated from Brigham Young University at the same time, and he took a job in Texas. We moved there and purchased our first house about two months before our oldest was born. We knew absolutely no one. We only had one car, and I had ultrasounds downtown twice a week.

I don’t think I need to tell you anymore about just how difficult this pregnancy was.

Because my Remicade infusions pass through the placenta, we had to schedule the c-section (because of the fistula) to be the day before an infusion was due so baby could be born with their immune system as strong as possible. And because I was getting so little nutrition, the baby stopped growing around 35 weeks.

So on 37 weeks to the day, our oldest was born technically full-term, but she only weighed 4 lbs, 8 oz. She was SO tiny. But she was perfect, and she was ours.

Postpartum Issues with Crohn’s

Everything went smoothly until she was about three months old, and then, once again, my health detoriorated quickly.

My Crohn’s flared horrifically.

I got mastitis so bad, I had to be admitted and get IV antibiotics.

The antibiotics brought back c. diff.

I developed an abscess, which burst on the inside within 24 hours of the lump forming.

The burst abscess caused me to go septic. I almost died. At one point, I had two different IV needles with 5 different medications all going in my body at once.

I got home, finally, only to go septic again from thrush.

The PICC line they gave me for the IV antifungals gave me a blood clot.

I got c. diff. again.

Randomly, my pancreatitis came back, necessitating a week in the hospital on IV-only nutrition.

The c. diff. became resistant to all antibiotics and I required a fecal matter transplant, which I wasn’t able to get for several months.

The untreatable c. diff. kept my Crohn’s flaring.

And finally, I got a UTI that quickly turned into a kidney infection.

Overall, I was hospitalized from when my first child was three months old to eight months old. I missed so many firsts. Even when I was home, I was too sick to remember much.

I can’t even begin to express how incredibly grateful I am for the women at my church. They barely knew me; we had only just moved there a month before! But they took turns taking care of my daughter – and me! – so my husband could go to work. He had no sick days left since he took the few days off when she was born, and he had only started working their a few months before.

That UTI made things click that no matter how hard I tried, this was like trying to stop a bunch of dominoes from knocking each other over. So we made the incredibly difficult decision for me to move in with my parents in Colorado, while my husband sold the house in Texas and tried to find a job in Colorado.

Those few months apart were some of the most difficult of my entire life.

My recovery was long and slow. I could barely walk up the stairs, and I had to use a wheelchair to even leave the house.

But slowly, over time, I recovered. My husband’s company ended up wanting to keep him, so they allowed him to work remotely from Colorado. Once a month, they would fly him down for a week at a time. So we purchased a house a couple of minutes from my parents, and I focused on getting better.

Finally Healing

After a couple of years, my Crohn’s was under control. I had been diagnosed with fibromylagia during that time, and it took about a year to get that under control. But I was stable.

So we had another kid. This pregnancy was one where I stayed the same – mild Crohn’s symptoms, but nothing major. No HG (hyperemesis gravidarum), but good old-fashioned morning sickness.

After baby #2 was born, I flared a little bit and went septic again from thrush, but overall, things were normal.

When our kids were 4 and 1, we made the decision to move back to Texas. We’ve now been here for five years and added kid #3 to our family. That was an easy pregnancy! My Crohn’s went into the best remission of my life. I felt incredible, and even walked 3 miles the day before the scheduled c-section!

The recovery this time was easier as well – no sepsis!

But being a mom with Crohn’s is a whole different thing than being pregnant with Crohn’s.

So stay tuned for the final part of my journey – Part 4: Crohn’s Mom.

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