Before Baby

When I was 30 weeks pregnant with my first, Briley, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called ITP. My body doesn’t recognize my platelets and destroys them. A normal platelet count is 150,000-400,000; when I was diagnosed mine were 67,000. (At the beginning of my pregnancy they were 118,000, but because it wasn’t too terribly low my OB didn’t catch it.) For the remainder of my pregnancy they stayed between 50,000-70,000. I did ivig, an IV infusion treatment, when I was 36 weeks pregnant. IVIG is supposed to “reboot” your immune system in the hopes that it will stop attacking your body. A week later I got sick with a virus, wound up in the maternity evaluation unit, and was found to be borderline pre-eclamptic… so I was induced. We were hoping for a count over 100,000 which is required for an epidural, but I was only at 56,000. I delivered her without the epidural after 22 hours. My platelets plummeted to 30,000 after delivery, but no complications and they began to climb back up after 24 hours. While not pregnant my counts stayed around 70,000-90,000… low, but not low enough to need treatment. Anytime I get sick my counts drop and after one virus in the summer of 2010 they dropped low enough that I started wondering if I should even put my body through another pregnancy. I hesitantly made an appointment with my hematologist dreading the news he would give me. I should state here that I LOVE my hematologist- he is everything I think a doctor should be. Kind, honest, funny, realistic, encouraging. I took my concerns to him and he basically said, “What are you waiting for?” He encouraged me to start trying for another baby as soon as we wanted. I told him I knew that another pregnancy could be just fine and I might not have any issues with my platelets and he said, “It could, but it could be worse. Either way, you will be fine. You can handle it. Go for it.” He gave me his complete blessing. As it turns out (as far as ITP goes) it was much worse and neither River nor I escaped unscathed, but knowing now what I didn’t then… well, I would still do it. I would still walk through it- every scary moment when each time I had a platelet count checked it was lower than the count before, every treatment, every hour I spent in the hospital with issues, everything. I would do it all again because it got my son to me.

I also have type 1 diabetes, but “excellent” control while pregnant and that is a quote straight from the horses mouth. River was discharged from the hospital with an 8 PAGE discharge summary chronicling everything from my pregnancy to his birth and entire NICU stay. My OB’s noted: “Mom has type 1 diabetes. Currently on MDI Lantus and Novalog with EXCELLENT CONTROL.” Vindication. So yeah, I might have huge babies (9 lbs, 1 oz. and 9 lbs, 12 oz), but it’s not because I have diabetes. (Soap box!) With both my pregnancies I averaged an a1c of 6.0-6.4. FYI, an a1c of someone without diabetes is considered normal at 6.0 and less. Once I got the all clear from my hematologist I knew my endocrinologist would follow suit. And he did.