Hi, I was diagnosed with ms just before my wedding last year, since then I’ve been on Tysabri which has worked brilliantly for me and kept symptoms at bay. 18 weeks ago my husband and i were thrilled to discover I’m pregnant, brilliant news but obviously i can’t take tysabri at the mo. The first three months were fine, in fact I felt great but just in the last 3-4 weeks some familiar and worrying signs have been rearing there ugly head namely my balance is starting to suffer, numb patches moving around my body (currently down my shins and in my feet) and I’ve begun suffering from pretty severer motion sickness when a passenger in a car. I’ve spoken to my ms nurse who just said that basically the doctors can’t give me anything, if I get really bad they might give me steroids so just to slow down. I’ve taken the past two weeks off work for Easter and I can tell the rest has done me good, even so I can’t help fearing that I’m ever so slowly getting worse, especially the balance. I just wanted some words of advice from any body else who’s been through pregnancy whilst battling ms, don’t really know what to do for the best, quite scared for the future if I’m honest. Any words if wisdom or even just comfort would be gratefully appreciated xxx
I wanted to send lots of sympathy your way, and also some reassurance. I didn’t know I had ms when I got pregnant with my first child, although I had a few symptoms. I found out when he was 6 months old, because I had something like a relapse a couple of months after giving birth. This is a common pattern - your immune system is ‘damped down’ when you are pregnant (to stop your body rejecting the baby) and so you are less likely to have attacks then (some women do get them tho). It is more common for women to be fine in pregnancy but get an attack afterwards as their immune system resets itself. I really hope that your symptoms get better rather than worse - there’s a good chance that this will happen as you get further into the pregnancy. Just a final word on the car nausea - I got that but always assumed it was just a pregnancy thing like morning sickness. It disappeared as soon as I had the baby. I had another baby after diagnosis and didn’t have any attacks during that pregnancy or for three years afterward. I’m just about to post on another thread about trying to get prescribed estriol, which is a pregnancy hormone the doctors think has a good effect on ms.