My Story: Managing My Pregnancy While Dealing With Endometriosis and Asthma

By Saniya Ghanoui —

CB shares her pregnancy and birthing story while managing stage four endometriosis and asthma.

Transcript:

CB: I had my son almost two months early. I was on bed rest, the entire time.  

They said that there’s like three categories of women with pregnancy and asthma: a third stays the same—a third, asthma gets worse—a third, asthma gets better. 

Mine got worse.  

So, it was to the point that I was like 120 milligrams of steroids, prednisone. Taking asthma treatments every four hours. I kept passing out. I had hyperemesis really bad, and this is all during COVID. 

So, I had a nurse come into my home with a PICC line in my arm trying to get fluid because I had lost 35 pounds in the beginning of my pregnancy. 

So, towards the end of my pregnancy, I only gained two pounds so overall I only gained two pounds. 

And now, looking back at it like when I looked at pictures, I was like so flushed I was like really, really, really, really light and my hands look like skeleton bones, and it was just really bad. 

And, as my son was trying to grow, I had five boys growing with him, so I had several like hospital stays. I end up being admitted into the hospital long term for almost three months until I had him. 

So, during COVID, I was hospitalized like I was a long-term patient in the hospital. 

Prior to them admitting me for like the duration of my pregnancy, I had done maybe four or five other hospital stays and make like two or three weeks at a time. 

And they were saying that the fibroids were growing, and it was like impacting. Carson’s growth. So, Carson wound up being four pounds and 13 ounces when I had him. Thankfully he didn’t have to go to the NICU, we didn’t have to stay longer, we were able to go straight home. 

But that’s kind of like the process that I had getting up to this point. After I had Carson, they say, “Oh, you know you’re supposed to bleed six weeks and then it’s supposed to go away,” no. 

Carson was almost six months and I was still bleeding after having him so then my doctor was like “I need you to go get another MRI ultrasound done,” and I said okay, fine. And when I went, in the middle of the MRI, the tech said: “Are you in pain?” 

And I said yes, and it was just weird that he, like stop because everybody know how MRIs is, especially if you’ve had to get them done. 

And I went to my doctor that Monday. He came in and normally he’ll be like, “Oh you just go schedule your surgery date with the lady at the desk.” He came in, he gave me dates. He said “April 27, May 9th, or May 10th. You have to get it done now.”

So, I had basically two weeks to get pre op stuff done because I had to have a hysterectomy, so I have—so April 27, I had a complete hysterectomy. 

And after like they do that, they analyze, they were like, lesions, non-cancerous tumors, and just a lot of things had like overtaken my whole reproductive system. 

And I do have a pelvic congestion which is like varicose veins of the pelvis so sometimes I have like really big flare ups, and I do like pelvic floor, because it kind of helps. 

And I have nerve damage from being like over the years of just being in so much pain from like my menstrual and endometriosis and the pelvic congestion. So yes, that’s my story that’s basically in a nutshell, what happened.