Most women spend their entire lives thinking they will have a glorious moment of holding a baby that shares their features that they have spent months bonding with while it develops inside of them. However, to someone with HEDS, this sounds about as appealing as running through a wood chipper. This does not make me any less of a woman or any worse of a future mother. When you spend your entire life trying to balance pain meds, physical therapy, and sleep just to maintain as "normal" of a life as you can, the idea of having a fetus throw off that balancing act is a torturous thought. EDS-ers heal slower than the average person and have a high risk of injury over all. Personally, my hips are so unstable that I already own an SI belt - which is typically given to pregnant women to pull their hips closer together to alleviate hip and lower back pain. So far all of this has been about me. There's about a 50% chance that a person with EDS will pass it on to the child. They will have the same type of EDS but how bad the type of EDS could be worse than that of the mother. Also, the long term effects of the medications I've been on could harm the child. I've been worried about that since long before my friends starting having children. There are always studies coming out about medications that have long been removed from the market that caused birth defects in children. This does not mean that people with HEDS can not have children. In fact, I know people who have successfully had and raised beautiful children. This is the choice of the individual after careful consideration and prayer.
I personally have always had a love for adoption and this just gives me one more reason to seriously take it into consideration.
EDNF has a lovely power point from a conference about it in more detail. If you are interested,
Click Here.
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