Anon2011

Ok, so my email stopped sending me updates and I missed all of your wonderful information until now! Thank you everyone for telling me all your thoughts. I will try to respond to everyone as concisely as possible (need to get back to studying). Person mentioned yeast allergy - thank you! I talked to my prof and she mentioned something similar, although I do have 3 chronic, diagnosed problems that are definitely causing the pain. However, she said I may have yeast/gluten allergy as well that could be exacerbating stuff. I will def be cutting out alcohol from my diet too! :) Thanks for the tip! I am very scared about the nausea getting worse. Here is the good thing - I realized that I have not had a vomitting attack (where I vomit every 30 minutes for a day or 2 and get severely dehydrated) for a year... which is when I completely changed my diet due to one of my conditions. So *knocks on wood* I think I have that figured out... but I'm sure I will be more prone to nausea being pregnant than someone else. And yeah, HG scares me poopless. Someone else mentioned financial concerns. I haven't been working now for almost a year, and we have paid the mortgage, all our bills, my tuition, my husband's tuition, etc all on my husband's salary. We have no car/credit card payments. We MIGHT still have a tiny bit of my husband's student loans left from his BS degree, but if we do, it's tiny. In short, really, I don't have to work... like ever. I could be a housewife. I'm going into nursing because I love it and I want to change the world in my own way. And we could afford a baby... especially if we stopped the thousands of dollars I'm spending on school right now. :) We are by no means rich, but we live below our means so we have a chunk in the bank. In fact, even with all our spending on school, we have saved a bunch of money each month! We are good little savers! Someone mentioned adoption. We have talked about it and have decided against it for many reasons for now. I feel like I can't talk about it without putting down some of my husband's thoughts, and I feel like it's not my place to do that. Would like to say that I have figured out a way to take vitamins that is causing only a fraction of pain! Totally livable! I am really excited about that. I have been taking them religiously now for at least a month and a half. I also did a ton of research on NVP and am taking folic acid (through fortified cereal) every day as well. In addition, I try to take B6 when my condition isn't flaring. I'm working on getting that in there daily. The icing on the cake will be if I can get a touch extra B12. The school is stressful concerns... I actually think that working will be more stressful than school. I know how school works, I do well, and I would rather try now. I talked with a friend about this and she felt the same way. The classmates and the professors are so supportive at my school that I think it would all turn out ok even if something moderately bad happened. That being said, if bedrest happened, preeclampsia style, or the nausea got really bad, that'd be horrible. However, I am going to have to take that risk eventually, no matter what. And frankly, I'd rather not go through that at the beginning of a job when I'm still establishing myself and getting to know people. Nurses can be really mean (sad truth), and right now with school, I feel like I'm in a safe environment with lots of great people to help me out. I have worked in other jobs with nasty people and that is the absolute WORST kind of stress for me. It makes me MISERALBE. I honestly think I would be so stressed that I don't know if I could even get pregnant. Plus, I would like to take some time off after school, before I got a job, to be with the baby. I know someone mentioned that the easiest time to get a job is right after you graduate, but plenty of people have babies right out of school. Nursing school is just one of those things a lot of people do right around the time they also get married and have kids. Even if I don't find a job right away, I have no doubt that I eventually will. I live in a great place to find work, and have a lot of fantastic contacts, so I'm not worried about that at all. So, long story short, it looks like my husband and I will be ttc! I will keep you guys updated. Because of the way classes/clinicals fall, if we don't get pregnant over the summer, we will stop trying for a while. I'm trying to plan for the first trimester to be when I take certain classes since that is when NV is usually the worst. And I am praying if I do get prego that I don't end up with HG. Thanks again for the support and insight. You guys rock! Wish me luck that I don't end up a sick chick!

Yeah Melmarie23, I wondered about that too... if getting or being pregnant after getting a job would mean more pressure to go back to work after having the baby. You're a new grad... barely establish relationships with people at work before you get pregnant (assuming you get pregnangy right away)... and then may not qualify for a lot of time like you said... I'd rather enjoy some time and get established first.

Thank you so much for all your replies and support!! I'm still torn about what to do, but I'm sure it will work out. Right now, things aren't unbearable (like they were a couple days ago), so it's easier to think about all the options without wanting to just rip my uterus out. Haha. I think what my hubby and I decided is that I'm going to get my diet under control first (I have a lot of restrictions and need to make sure I can get in all my nutrients), and we'll go from there on a timeframe. Although I am really excited at the possibility of feeling better, I don't want to rush myself so much that I do something potentially unhealthy for the baby (like not eat right... and if anything I tend to be underweight, so that's even more straining on nutrition). I like what you guys were saying about the nclex, so it seems like on the off chance that we did get pregnant the first month we tried (really doubt that will happen, but you never know), we should probably wait at least a month. And to answer an earlier question, I would like to take time off with the baby before going back to work. I think both my husband and I agree on that. We don't want him/her to be in day care so young. Most day care places are great, but we're both clingy people and I know he had some bad experiences in day care when he was a little guy... so we want to at least wait a few months. But taking time off is another factor that makes me feel like we should go for it now instead of wait. It seems like you'd want to either be set to deliver right around the time you graduate (with a little padding like most of you have said) or you want to start ttc right after you get a job. Otherwise, you'll look pregers for the job interviews, but still have a bunch of time left to go in the pregnancy. I'd rather spend that job gap with the baby and enjoy it... rather then feel like I really need to get back to work cause I've been out of a job during my whole last trimester. So hopefully we'll end up trying soon! We'll see. Thanks again for all your thoughtful advice. And thanks LeBlanc for the book recommendation! I will check into it for sure. I also really liked the perspective about kids vs. career. It seems like women are forced to make that decision sooner or later anyway. It's not like I plan on conveniently sitting around for a year just randomly...

Thanks for your replies guys! PinknBlue... I was worried about that myself... it would suck to go into labor right around the time NCLEX happened. anon 695... I am on track to graduate a semester earlier than that... this december. I think look at it more like this - either get a hysterecomy now and not have kids ever... or get pregnant now. That's where I'm at - but today is a really rough day pain wise. It actually motivated me to post this. I feel like I could probably put ttc off a few months maybe... but it will be agony. And no, I can't take birth control unfortunately. I have tried multiple kinds... both combo and progesterone only. And that's part of the reason why I'm here. It made one problem even worse. I tried surgery also. Didn't work. I've tried another invasive procedure that did not work and was really expensive to continue trying. Suffice to say, there are no more treatment options that I know of (believe me, I am looking every day) that will help. I've seen several specialists for each condition. The problem with me is I have 3 complex problems that all exacerbate each other... and each problem is made worse by some of the treatments for the others. In fact, pregnancy is really the best thing for me health wise right now. The hysterectomy would really only knock out one of the problems... which would hopefully help the other 2, but wouldn't get rid of them. Pregnancy and breastfeeding (or just lactactating) will knock out 2 of them. And they happen to be the ones giving me the most problems. But def, thanks for your input. I am scared to death that if I did do this, I would't be one of the "lucky" ones who had a horrible pregnancy. It would be just my luck...

Hi All, First off, I have read just about every thread on this website about this topic, but my situation is different. I'm in my mid 20s and nearing the age where my hubby and I want to have kids anyway. I graduate in december 2011 with my bsn, so let's say I got pregnant next month... the baby would be born the month I graduate. We wanted to ideally wait until I was finished with school, but here's the kicker. I have some health problems, 2 of which that are known to go into remission during pregnancy and breastfeeding. I'm sure some of you will guess what they are, but here are some highlights: -one commonly causes infertility - this risk increases with age -during my cycle, I am completely incapacitated for a day or two due to excruciating pain. I have missed work when I used to work, have missed class... I just lucked out that it hasn't fallen on an exam yet. -I am quite sick in general, even outside of my monthly time. nausea, vomitting, that kind of thing. It has also made me miss some classes... or attended clinicals absolutely miserable. I know pregnancy can cause sickness as well, but in my case, it will definitely clear away the incapacitating menstrual problems. Then... assuming I have a normal pregnancy... I only have to deal with the n/v and fatigue... which will hopefully not be worse than what I'm dealing with now. But honestly, the biggest thing I care about are the monthly nightmares. And so far, despite having all these health problems, I'm doing more than fine in school. We were really planning on waiting, but these health problems cause excruciating pain. I really want to get a hysterectomy, but my husband and I both want kids... so ideally I would have a couple kids and then my obgyn said she would do the hysterectomy (I CANNOT WAIT). The past couple months have been a living heck for me as I've recently acquired a new symptom associated with these illnesses, and I'm really at the end of my leash with this horrible pain... thus, I'm considering taking the plunge and trying to get pregnant in school. I've never been through labor, but from talking with other women who have these conditions... some of them say it's worse than labor... and I believe them. And it happens every single month. What do you guys think? I know it would be an awkward time when the baby is born if I get pregnant right away, and I probably won't be able to get a job right away since I'd still look pregnant, but my husband and I could survive just fine financially for a few months - it would just be explaining the gap at my interview.