Yeah. When I was in my paediatric centre in one of my Clinic appointments my doctor just said to me, you know like we can just talk about when your. He said I’d just like to have a little chat with you just because like about when you, when you’re older. Just about like having children. And he was, he was really nice about. He said that you might read things or you might like see articles about people with CF getting pregnant and having babies. And he said that I’d just like to like reassure you that there have been like many happy ending stories of CF people having children. And he just explained that it depends on whether the lung function and the health status of that patient at the time when they’re thinking of having children and it totally depends on the situation and the circumstances of each individual person. So you can’t just generally say that CF people will all have happy, healthy, well pregnancies. And you can’t say that well CF people shouldn’t have children. So he said. He explained that you can’t make generalisations about that and you can’t say, ‘Well I don’t think someone with CF should have a child. But he explained that obviously pregnancy does put a lot of strain on your body and already having CF puts strain on your body so pregnancy could be quite difficult maintaining all your treatments and things like physio. And he just briefly explained about that. And just mentioned that it obviously depends on how, how well you are at the time. And what the consequences of it could be ’cause if you are well then hopefully you’d like to think that you’d get through the pregnancy fine and that everything would go well. But if you are feeling. If you are like not quite so well or you’ve got an infection or your lung function’s reduced for some reason it might not be a good time at that time or in the future to have children. So he just explained all that to me and I’ve never really spoke to a doctor about it since. But that was when I was probably about 14. So.

And how did you, how did you take that?

At first I was quite shocked that he was talking to me about it. I was, I’m only 14. I’m not going to have any babies yet. But then I think it, I really appreciate him telling me about that because from a young age I was aware of it and if I read an article or saw something saying like CF people shouldn’t have children. I’d have been like, ‘What. But because I’d, I was aware of both sides of the story then I think that was really good talking to me about it from a younger age and making me aware of the different, you know, the distant situations and circumstances.

What have the doctors say regarding if you want to start a family?

Not really a lot, like when I was sort of 18 they did tell us that you know, that people with Cystic Fibrosis tend to have a lower fertility in men, its usually non existent, but for women they just said that, you know, there is every chance that you’ll fall pregnant and you need to still take proper precautions, if necessary, and they said that you know there does tend to be a lower fertility rate in people with Cystic Fibrosis, but he says there’s no reason why, if and when you choose, that you can have a child or things like that, but he says as well that, you know, the partner that you choose is, is able to have tests as well to see if they have the CF gene which obviously increases the chance of your child having Cystic Fibrosis. So they do sort of tell you, you know, that you may not be able to, or you may have a lower fertility, but obviously still to take the proper precautions cause if and when you do want to have a baby you’ve got to be of a certain health and have a, you know, have a certain level of lung function and be of a good overall health before you even think about starting to have a kid, because pregnancy can obviously take a lot out of somebody with Cystic Fibrosis. So, because obviously you can’t be as active and you know there is a pressure on your heart and your lungs and just everything, so, they are quite good like that, they says that obviously as well fertility dies as you get older, your fertility lowers so you need to think about maybe when, and where and you know, so.

But then I had the absolute shock of my life. I, my pain changed, the pain that I was getting was different, I was emotional, there was something going on and I was in, my pain in my pelvis was just really, really different, but really painful and I don’t know why, whatever possessed me to do it, but I did a pregnancy test and I was pregnant which, you know, there’s no, nothing that can ever, you know, no words that can ever, ever put a point on how, how I react, how I felt, everything that went with it and how my family and my partner, everybody that knew me, how they felt and reacted and everything. Which was fantastic, I was so pleased to be pregnant and then especially as a lot of the time over the time that I’d been ill, I’d been told, if you have a baby, if you do fall pregnant, you’re going to get better, because the endometriosis gets better with pregnancy, and so on. And that was by the people that were speculating that there was anything else other than the endometriosis going on. So it was great. I was pregnant, so the fact that I couldn’t have children, I was having a baby. The fact that I’d been told by so many people that I was going to get better when I had a baby all of a sudden all my prayers were, you know, the things that were important had come true and it was just amazing. I didn’t really believe I was pregnant for a long time, I don’t, we never went out and bought anything until I was 33 weeks [laughs] but I was ill from the offset.

The first twelve weeks I had sickness and all the things that go with it, which was fantastic, but pelvic pain, lower back pain, I’d had to come off of all my medication. So there I was back to, you know, agony basically. In the sense that I’m in pain every day, but it was different control of pain, taking medication to help pain, but didn’t actually take the pain away but made you able to live. So I was in pain, so I was bedridden. From twelve weeks I was able to start taking Co-codomol and Amitriptyline again, which was absolutely scary as anything because all I was worried about was this baby I was having. And then I was in and out of hospital from seventeen and a half weeks right through to the birth for weeks at a time and the rest of the time I was bedridden at my parents’ house on the basis that I was bedridden at my parents house otherwise I was in hospital, that was the compromise. And then I gave birth to my daughter, happened naturally, great, epidural though, I was a poofed I had my daughter, which was fantastic.