Body After Baby

 It's been a year after I had my last baby and I'm still trying to gain weight back. You heard me.I keep going through weight dips because I a) have been prescribed too much thryoid hormone or b) tried herbal remedies at the same time as taking an M.D. prescribed thryoid hormone, which I do not recommend. Being underweight is just as scary as being overweight. No one tells teenage girls this, but it's true.

In any case, right around now (when my DD is one) is when my DH and I would have started thinking about conceiving a Baby #3. This has been on my mind a lot lately because I thought that I would have been mostly "over" my health issues by now.

This post is more therapy and mental-processing for myself than for anybody else's benefit. :) I'm trying to assess what I have been told, what I have read, and how I feel in terms of expanding our family anytime soon.

*I've been told I can still have another baby. Both the M.D.'s who I feel have no handle on what is going on with my body have said this and my Cool Acupuncture Guy. It's been very reassuring to have someone outside of my marriage have faith and confidence in my ability to bear children.

*The fluctuation in my weight hasn't been because of malnutrition, but because I've been periodically getting TOO MUCH thyroid hormone, which makes my metabolism super fast. Though I'm sure the big D hasn't helped matters.

*Pregnancy with an autoimmune condition is considered high-risk. Those that I have found explicitly listed are rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma, and a few more that I don't have. I have been tested and re-tested for a battalion of autoimmune diseases and been told that I don't have them. This is one reason I feel frustrated with the Western medical profession--I don't fit in any of their boxes, but they're still trying to medicate me.

*I have a sneaking suspicion that if I hadn't been so over-treated initially, I wouldn't have been set on such a yo-yo course. I think that the massive dose of thyroid hormone just made things worse for my already confused thyroid. (At the time, I did get a second opinion. The second M.D. basically said he had no idea what was the right thing to do, and I could take the drugs or just wait and see what would happen. I wish I had been LESS proactive.)

In fact, women with post-partum thyroiditis shouldn't always be treated; this article says that no treatment is recommended unless the symptoms are too uncomfortable: "If hypothyroidism during postpartum thyroiditis is causing significant symptoms, experts recommend thyroid hormone replacement treatment. Typically, the medication is administered for up to three months, and then stopped so that testing can be done again in another four to six weeks." No one did this for me. I was told I'd be on medication for life, which I feel like in some ways is a blatant lie.


*I keep reading blogs where women like me end up just making the firm decision to cut out certain foods for a prolonged, sometimes indefinite, amount of time. They choose to do this because it makes such a dramatic difference in their health and their thyroid hormone levels. I think I need to do the same.


*I have been told by one doctor that I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, which as far as I can tell means that I have TPO antibodies that attack my own thyroid...

*...however, I have also read that many women have these same antibodies post-partum. In some women the antibodies do nothing, and in some the antibodies attack the thyroid a little, and in some women they end up permanently damaging the thyroid. Right now, I honestly have no idea where I fall on this spectrum. I have been treated for it for so long that I don't know what my body is doing on it's own. It's like dying your hair so much you no longer know what its real color is.

*Certain foods (gluten) seem to cause those of us who are already predisposed to have flare-ups or attacks of auto-immunity. And then there are foods that are just specific people problems (for me, corn, strawberries...). I keep prematurely trying to work foods back into my diet because I want bread, dammit. I want cheesy pizza from Pizza Hut with a chaser of D.Q. Blizzard. But I think that it's in my best interest, and in the best interest of any future children we try to have, that I don't.

*Since I have for sure had 'thryoid problems' after pregnancy, I am likely to have them again. ("After postpartum thyroiditis that resolves, a woman still faces a substantially increased risk of developing hypothyroidism or a goiter later. Some experts estimate that as many as half the women who have hypothyroidism in postpartum thyroiditis will be permanently hypothyroid within seven years.") There is actually a 70% chance it will happen to me again, i.e. after a baby I will suffer an auto-immune attack on my thyroid. Hopefully nothing else! But I am hopeful that next time around I will be better prepared to prevent this from happening. I read this in a study:

"Selenium supplementation may decrease inflammatory activity in pregnant women with autoimmune hypothyroidism, and may reduce the risk of postpartum thyroiditis in women who are positive for thyroid peroxidase (TPO) antibodies. This was illustrated in a trial of 151 TPO-positive women randomly assigned to receive selenium (200 mcg daily) or placebo (beginning at about the 12th week of gestation). Postpartum thyroiditis occurred in 22 of 77 women (29%) in the selenium group, compared to 36 of 74 (49%) in the placebo group [28]. The routine clinical application of this supplementation requires further study."

As I said in my last blog post, I'm not taking anything right now that is supposed to 'support' my thyroid or replace its hormones. I am taking things that are anti-inflammatory, like ginger, green tea, CoQ10, milk thistle...

I haven't found out what my current thyroid levels are, but it seems to me that my thyroiditis (the swinging from high to low and back again) are leveling out. I have minute arthritis or fatigue in the early morning and late afternoon (which signal hypothyroidism to me) and then it all disappears.

I have a crazy hope and fervent prayer that my thyroid will figure itself out. With a restricted diet, good supplements, and great nutrition, I'm really hoping that my body balances out and I can start to heal, really heal and be healthy. If it doesn't and I end up taking something again, well, I'll face that when I come to it. Right now before I go to sleep, I am going to dare to hope. Hope that I do not have to take a pill again for years. Hope that I can have another Little Q. Hope that I can be proof that something weird and alternative and difficult does work.

Quotes taken from About.com and Clinical aspects of recurrent postpartum thyroiditis by J H Lazarus, F Ammari, R Oretti, A B Parkes, C J Richards, and B Harris.