MS diagnosis after oldest child

New diagnosis and before diagnosis
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Hi

This is my 1st post. I was diagnosed with MS last June (2014). I have slow progressive and in my MS nurses words relatively benign!! My question is; my MS symptoms became obvious after the birth of my 1st child 10 years ago. I experienced tingling, balance problems, organisation problems and many many more that were not understandable at the time. W Now with the MS diagnosis, it all fell into place.

Why does child birth seem to trigger MS relapse. My pregnancy, and further pregnancy 3 years later (although I believe I suffered serious MS symptoms until 1 year ago), was amazing, I loved being pregnant. My ex-husband (ex I believe now because I was seriously suffering due to MS, we didn’t know this so could not adjust our relationship accordingly) and I struggled to set up a new home for our new family but we were happy. I understand, to a point, MS and it’s varying nature. I loose the understand when I think why did it all go sooo wrong after I have my 1st child. I look back at my life and think as early as my teenage years, I could if I tried hard enough pinpoint incidents which could be classed as MS symptoms.

I suppose what I am trying to say is I am struggling to understand why the birth of my 1st born triggered such changes in my MS that I could no longer ignore my strange health.

Lorna

xx

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What symptoms did you experience? I’ve had tingling and sensations around my body for 5 years with no cause as yet. I’m interested that you say yours is a slow progression.

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I’m aware of a couple of theories about why established RRMS tend to go quiet during pregnancy and why there is an increased risk of relapse after birth for these women, and also a tendency for MS to rear its head obviously for the first time in women who have not had MS before (or, at least, not known they had it).

One theory concerns the immune response, the argument being that a woman’s immune system must relax its guard a bit in order to tolerate and support the growing foetus. Then, after birth, the immune system reestablishes itself with a vengeance. The problem is that, if the woman’s auto-immune system has a kink in it - like a tendency to attack the wrong things - that will tend to reveal itself when the immune system is being particularly active. The theory is that this is why women with auto-immune conditions tend to suffer flares of disease activity after birth.

This is just my completely unscientific half-remembered version of something I read. Others might have much better information for you.

Alison

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