I went to our new doctors’
surgery 2 days after moving to get the ball moving as time was ticking by and I
needed to see a midwife as soon as possible.
They were very helpful and the doctor faxed a referral to Epsom Hospital
to make sure I was seen quickly. She
explained they like women with high risk pregnancies to have their first
appointment at the hospital where they can decide whether to monitor your
pregnancy in the hospital, community or a mixture of the two. All pregnancies of women with epilepsy are
considered high risk, which I see as good thing as it means you are more
closely monitored.
As
I had decided to have the baby at Epsom hospital I knew there was one other
person I needed to tell, my friend Emma who I had known since we were 2 and a
half at nursery together, we had been through a lot in the past and had had
periods where we drifted apart but whenever we did see each other it was like
we hadn’t been apart. Emma was doing a
midwifery degree and I knew she was based at Epsom Hospital, I didn’t want her
finding out I was pregnant from picking up my notes one day! So we went out for dinner and I told her I
was pregnant, she seemed really excited.
She also said she needed someone who was a more complex case as a case
study for her final year; she would follow my progress through the whole
pregnancy to whatever extent I wanted.
It seemed like a really good idea, from a practical point of view having
someone who knows what is going on in all areas of my care could only be a good
thing, but also more importantly Emma had been such a big part of almost the
whole of my life, as well as both our families having been so close in the
past, having her there at the birth of my baby would be truly special.
So
I had my first midwife appointment, my booking appointment, at Epsom
Hospital. I had spent a lot of time in
Epsom Hospital, be it A&E when I fell off my horse (it was just round the
corner from the stables) or on Casey Ward looking after children from work and
I actually liked it as much as you can like any hospital, it was always very
busy but somehow things at least got done.
But walking into the maternity wing of a hospital is very different
somehow. It was a very busy waiting area
filled with women at different places in their pregnancies as well as mothers
with babies and toddlers. It somehow
made it all very real, that would be me over the next few months…
The
appointment went so much better than my last midwife appointment. They were really helpful and gave me lots of
advice about pregnancy, some of which seemed to contradict the last midwife
such as it was perfectly safe to have the flu jab at any point in pregnancy
whereas the other midwife said I had to wait till I was 12 weeks. I decided to go with what the Epsom midwife
said as she seemed to be a bit more clued up, so I made sure I booked a flu jab
as soon as I left. They also really listening to me about my epilepsy, they
seemed to take it all on board, both the medical side and the fact that I was
pretty scared about pregnancy and looking after a baby while having
epilepsy. They didn’t pretend to know
more than they actually knew and just reassured me that I would see a consultant
at the hospital very soon and that there was no reason it wouldn’t be a
straight forward pregnancy. People quite often ask me questions such as does
your epilepsy medication affect the baby and could the baby inherit epilepsy?
I take
Lamotrigine which is one of the safest medications from this respect in
pregnancy. However because I am on a
higher dose the risk of a birth defect is in increased, so the risk in lower
doses is approximately 2.5% and in higher doses is 6% so I fall somewhere in
between. But I wouldn’t reduce my
medication because when I do have a major seizure I go very blue and I am at a
high risk of injuring myself and my baby.
Reducing or stopping my medication wasn’t even something I considered as
I haven’t really been seizure free so the risk of having a seizure seems to
outweigh the benefits of stopping the medication.
They
don’t really know why I have epilepsy but it could be due to a low seizure
threshold so the possibility of my baby inheriting it is possible but the risk
is still small and at the end of the day there are worse things to suffer from
so I am not going to live worrying, if they do have epilepsy I will be there to
support them just like my Mum was there for me.
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