Whenever my husband shares our good news, he always says I am growing a person (hence the title). That is right, my husband and I will be expecting our first child next June! We are so over the moon excited.
We found out we were pregnant a week after the triathlon. I was technically 4 weeks along when I completed the triathlon. My husband was very excited right off the bat but I was very nervous. With all of my medical issues, I was nervous how this pregnancy was going to play out and how my health was going to be affected. It was a very long first trimester keeping my fingers crossed everything was going ok with the baby and it was developing how it was supposed to.
I am currently 15 weeks 2 days and everything has been going great so far! I have been feeling fantastic. I haven’t been sick a single day which has been awesome. I was very, very tired at the beginning. I would sleep for about 10 hours at night and then come home on my lunch and take a 20 minute nap. It was insane. I had no energy to do anything. Thankfully I have a wonderful husband who helped more around the house and even made dinner a few nights because I was just exhausted.
So far everything with my health has been great. I see my OB every 4 weeks, my nephrologist now wants to see me every 3 months instead of 6 months and he also wants me to see an endocrynologist once a month to make sure my thyroid levels are where they are supposed to be. Having my thyroid levels in a normal range is very important while pregnant because it can affect the development of the baby. I am going to be having a lot of doctor’s appontments throughout this journey but that is fine with me to make sure me and baby are doing well.
I probably won’t be doing weekly updates on here like a lot of people like to do with their personal blogs. Instead, I will be doing updates when I see doctors to let everyone know how my health is doing. There will be a baby update at least once a month so you won’t be missing out.
I have yet to find a blog about someone with PKD who has gone through a pregnancy so I hope this will help some women dealing with PKD see my journey. A lot of people with PKD choose not to have children because there is a 50% chance of passing on the disease to offspring. That is not enough to keep me from having children because I have always wanted kids of my own.
Thank you endlessly for sharing this! I’m 26 and was diagnosed with PKD two years ago after unrelated stomach issues led to an ultrasound, which led to doctors finding gym cysts. All my high blood pressure finally made sense! Now my husband and I are planning to start a family in a year and no matter how much I dig around on the Internet, I can’t find any (non-alarmist) info about pregnancy and PKD. Congratulations on your pregnancy, and I can’t wait to follow you in your journey to starting a family!
Ellie
Hello Ellie! My son is now 8 months old. I have slacked on posting but knowing I have readers like you, it is encouraging me to start posting again. So thank you and I hope you stick around 🙂
I didn’t even notice that post was a year old! Thank you for the update, and I’m so happy to hear you have a healthy and sweet little boy. My kidneys have plenty of small cysts, but my kidney function is still 100% and PKD has mostly just been manifesting as high blood pressure. I’m just so scared that having two babies will take a toll on my kidneys, and all of a sudden I’ll have lost a huge percentage of kidney function. My dad found out he had PKD after I found out, and his kidney function is totally fine at almost age 60. So I guess I’ll just have to have my fingers crossed that my PKD will have the same trajectory as his, I suppose…feel free to email me at Kunkes.eleanor@gmail.com if you’d rather DM me instead of posting here.