Testimonial: The visceral fear of losing them

A testimony on the fear, medical follow-up and fragility experienced during a high-risk twin pregnancy.

April 28, 2016

Starting at my 16E During the week of pregnancy, I will have ultrasounds every 2 weeks.

Chéri has found a new job: the perfect job of the future dad! 5 minutes from home, he comes back for dinner every noon, he's back home in time to help me make dinner and, in addition, he's off on Friday afternoons. The dream! But a new job means not being too absent from the office. At the beginning, you still have to gain the trust of your new employer. And to be committed by saying that we are going to take paternity leave in 5-6 months is not very profitable.

But for my part, I am so afraid of being told about any problem during my follow-ups that I cannot bring myself to go to my appointments alone. The list of potential problems and complications is so long. I know very well that if a disaster is announced to me, I will be scooped up with a teaspoon. I then set up guard towers with my friends!

I am lucky to have friends who are available and who have flexible working hours. They therefore accompanied me when the man could not free himself from work and had the role of remaining rational if I was told bad news. I set myself the limit of my 24E week of pregnancy to deal with my concerns and ask my friends to accompany me. I know that after this stage, the babies are viable, and therefore that I will fall back on this comforting idea to survive the announcement of a possible complication.

However, I am fortunate to have my pregnancy follow-ups with Dr Zen, and I have always had good news during my ultrasounds. The babies were fine, nothing to worry about!

However, I feel that my lungs are suffering from my pregnancy and I feel a bit like my situation is falling between 2 chairs. That is to say, the medical team dealing with CF and pregnancy relied on my pneumologist specializing in CF, and my pulmonologist blamed my lung damage on my pregnancy (we understand each other, in my small regional clinic, he may have seen a maximum of 10-15 pregnant women with CF). At my 23E During the week of pregnancy, I took a lung function test, which revealed that my FEV1 was 83%. So my lung capacity has dropped by 17% since the start of my pregnancy. It worries me, but I am told that it is due to the pregnancy, that I have to accept this new state...

If there's anything you learn with a chronic illness, it's resilience. Resilient I will then be, even if my cough prevents me from sleeping well at night, prevents me from gaining weight well and requires more daily respiratory treatments on my part. After all, babies are fine, that's all that matters, right? I will take care of myself after pregnancy, that's all.

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