Where in the World has Autoimmune Gal been?

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Some of you might have noticed that I haven't been blogging as much.  My twitter and Facebook presence has also dwindled.  But I promise there is good reason for my less frequent communication.

It also happens to be a very exciting and wonderful reason--my husband and I are expecting our first child.  Yes, Autoimmune Gal is pregnant.

We didn't know that having a family would be a possibility given my multiple autoimmune and health issues.  It took lots of communication and coordination with multiple doctors to just plan for the possibility of trying to get pregnant.

Important medical questions and issues had to be addressed.  What medications would I be able to stay on?  Did I need to change medications or lower doses before becoming pregnant or was it safe to wait until a pregnancy was actually confirmed?  How would we keep my autoimmune disease in check, while trying to protect the baby?  Would pregnancy make my autoimmune manifestations worse, the same, or better? And these were just the tip of the iceberg.

With pregnancy many of these questions do not have clear cut answers.  Medicines aren't regularly tested on pregnant women so there is less data than one would like on safety and fetal outcomes.  The doctors have constantly reminded me that if I'm not healthy, the baby won't be either, but this is really tough complicated stuff.  And we've certainly added another big and of course wonderful variable to the careful health balancing act.  

Beyond my autoimmune issues, my pregnancy is super high risk so I'm being monitored you might say within an inch of my life.  I guess you could say I'm super super high risk.   My doctors appointments have more than doubled and every health issue that comes up has to be thought through even more carefully and methodically.  Right now, we're trying to enjoy the pregnancy while keeping our fingers double and triple crossed that everything will be OK.  We know this is such an amazing blessing, but we still have a long way to go.  

So that's my update on where I've been.  I love writing and communicating with all of you and feel like something is missing when I'm not.  I'll keep writing as much as I can.  I know when the baby comes it will be a whole new kind of busy too!