My arthritis has really started to flare up. My hands and feet are swollen and stiff and my hips just started to hurt today. I know this is not just the normal pregnancy complaints because of the progression and severity. Up until now, it's been a toss up between what's normal aches, pains and fatigue from the pregnancy and what could be my arthritis. This is getting significantly harder to deal with as each day passes. I even tried a cold compress to ease the pain in my hands this morning, but it didn't work very well.
It is odd that it is starting to affect me now. Rheumatoid Arthritis is supposed to be relieved by pregnancy and it has disappeared by about 95% until the last couple of weeks. When I saw my rheumatologist about 3 weeks ago, she noticed my finger joints were inflamed. They didn't hurt much at that point, but have progressively gotten worse since then. This morning, in the last of my 3 nightly trips to the bathroom, my feet were so stiff and swollen that it was hard to walk.
Another thing that is odd about all of this that these are all textbook symptoms of RA, inflaming the small joints of the hands and feet, which is the exact opposite of what happened when I started getting sick three years ago. My illness originally appeared as a general painful ache with considerable fatigue and mostly affected larger joints. The most problematic were my hips, jaw, neck and elbow.
While I don't have the blood marker for RA, I do have some sort of inflammatory arthritis caused by an autoimmune disease that closely resembles RA. Most autoimmune diseases are treated pretty much the same way, by suppressing the immune system with some potent prescription drugs. I have not been able to entirely get off all of my medicine, but is currently a very, very low dose.
I'm very bummed that I might have to take my medicine up a notch. Taking anything while pregnant is a risk, but if I get to the point that I can't function normally, then I have no other choice. The steroid I'm taking now also speeds up lung development, so he may be ready to come out a little sooner, though it is such a low dose I doubt it is having much of an impact at all.
My illness will flare again after the birth. I have no idea when the flare will happen, but it will get worse within weeks of giving birth. My doctor doesn't anticipate a severe flare, but if I'm already having to take more medicine, then it means even MORE medicine when my illness gets worse. Most of the medicines are excreted in breast milk and since I really want to breastfeed I have to weigh the risk of what the immune suppressive drugs will do to the baby and choosing to feed formula instead. There's no right or wrong answer as little study has been done on this, and every doctor has their own opinion of what is and isn't safe. Since the governmental guidelines are extremely vague in this arena, it's a hard choice to make.
It sure would be easier if I just had to worry about what stroller I like the best, but I am glad that, so far, the baby looks healthy.
