So Many Questions
So you have been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. What about your children? Can you have them? Should you have them? What will life be like for your children?
These are just some of the questions that cross the mind of a person who has MS. My biggest struggle with my diagnosis was reconciling my role as a parent to my serious, often disabling and, for now, incurable disease.
I know that I am not alone in this struggle. How do we walk our new, unworn, involuntary path?
Can You Have Children After Diagnosis?
Yes, you can have children. Pregnancy does not progress your MS. Realistically, the likelihood that you will have progression during your pregnancy is very low.
There are some considerations in regards to your medications that need to be discussed with your physician; some medications can cause birth defects. You will need to choose carefully which medication is safest, for the interim, before you begin trying to have children.
Once you decide to have a child, you will need to talk to your doctor to decide when it will be best for you to stop using your disease modifying drugs and when to begin them again.
How to Create a Happy Home?
How do I build a happy home? This is the question that all parents have on their minds. Having MS seems to electrify the emotion and light up the question in neon hues, highlighting all the doubts and fears that we tuck away in our minds.
The answer to the question takes many forms and looks so different from what we imagine. Though, looking back on the years that have passed since my diagnosis, I have found that the years are better, more full than they would have been without my disease.
The truth is, you’re still very capable of cultivating something of beauty within this new world of uncertainty. You are also giving your children the gift of understanding life in all of it’s faults and shortcomings.
What It Is Really All About
When I had my first child I was not yet diagnosed with MS. I had had a hard life as a child and I was hell bent on ensuring that my children had the most safe, stable and loving homes on the planet. My diagnosis felt like God was spitting in my face and ripping away all of my abilities to provide that life for my family.
Regretfully, due to my fears, combined with some misinformation from my neurologist, I decided that I should not have a second child. My years since have become a sort of paradoxical countdown.
I want to enjoy and hang onto every moment that we have together, but I also want my son to be grown and out of the house before I am not physically capable of caring for myself. I want the time that I have raising him to be filled with vibrant, meaningful moments that do not hold him back.
That is what we all want, right?
