what happened to me in the womb?
April 2, 2010 4:23 PM Subscribe
what happened to me in the womb? like Rh factor, but not.
my mother has mentioned that it is like Rh factor, but is actually a cold antibody. i've looked up cold antibody, but i can't find much in reference to pregnancy. discussing my health with my parents is sort of frustrating, and i'm trying to piece together my infancy and childhood as it relates to my sicklyness. i figured birth was the best place to start. i know YANMD or YANAD and that you weren't there/don't know me/haven't seen my charts - but maybe hazard a guess?
here's the story as it has been told to me:
while my mother was pregnant with my brother (18 months older than me), something happened with their blood, possibly during delivery (?). then when she got pregnant with me, her body thought i was a virus and actively tried to kill me for the entire pregnancy. in the early stages, terminating the pregnancy was recommended, but denied by my parents. she was told that she probably wouldn't take me to term and that she could never have any more kids after this pregnancy, no matter how it all turned out. she had to do multiple rounds of amniocentesis so the doctors could track my progress. her labor was incredibly quick (20 minutes) and either immediately after or during the same hospital stay she was given a partial hysterectomy (possibly unrelated as she had endometriosis).
i apparently didn't gain weight how i was supposed to (or gained and then lost?) and at 3 months old i was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection. my parents say the doctors said i was probably born with it and it just wasn't caught. i was given a round of penicillin which almost kills me and the doctor says to never give me penicillin again. to this day i very easily get UTIs.
when i was between 4-6 years old, my mother had a full hysterectomy (although, again, i think related to her endometriosis, not any of the pregnancy blood stuff - just mentioning it here, as i wonder if the blood thing and the endometriosis are responsible for different things that have been muddled).
my mom has 3 kids - i'm her last and i was born when she was 20. my brother's birth and my birth were taken care of by air force doctors and hospitals in the US. i don't have constant medical records because my dad left the service when i was 6 and my doctor history has been incredibly spotty.
so what happened to me/us? is it the reason for my UTIs? are there any continued health concerns? as i mentioned at the beginning, i was/am fairly sickly and i'm just trying to get a handle on how everything relates (you can look forward to future questions about allergies, asthma, and sinusitis).
my mother has mentioned that it is like Rh factor, but is actually a cold antibody. i've looked up cold antibody, but i can't find much in reference to pregnancy. discussing my health with my parents is sort of frustrating, and i'm trying to piece together my infancy and childhood as it relates to my sicklyness. i figured birth was the best place to start. i know YANMD or YANAD and that you weren't there/don't know me/haven't seen my charts - but maybe hazard a guess?
here's the story as it has been told to me:
while my mother was pregnant with my brother (18 months older than me), something happened with their blood, possibly during delivery (?). then when she got pregnant with me, her body thought i was a virus and actively tried to kill me for the entire pregnancy. in the early stages, terminating the pregnancy was recommended, but denied by my parents. she was told that she probably wouldn't take me to term and that she could never have any more kids after this pregnancy, no matter how it all turned out. she had to do multiple rounds of amniocentesis so the doctors could track my progress. her labor was incredibly quick (20 minutes) and either immediately after or during the same hospital stay she was given a partial hysterectomy (possibly unrelated as she had endometriosis).
i apparently didn't gain weight how i was supposed to (or gained and then lost?) and at 3 months old i was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection. my parents say the doctors said i was probably born with it and it just wasn't caught. i was given a round of penicillin which almost kills me and the doctor says to never give me penicillin again. to this day i very easily get UTIs.
when i was between 4-6 years old, my mother had a full hysterectomy (although, again, i think related to her endometriosis, not any of the pregnancy blood stuff - just mentioning it here, as i wonder if the blood thing and the endometriosis are responsible for different things that have been muddled).
my mom has 3 kids - i'm her last and i was born when she was 20. my brother's birth and my birth were taken care of by air force doctors and hospitals in the US. i don't have constant medical records because my dad left the service when i was 6 and my doctor history has been incredibly spotty.
so what happened to me/us? is it the reason for my UTIs? are there any continued health concerns? as i mentioned at the beginning, i was/am fairly sickly and i'm just trying to get a handle on how everything relates (you can look forward to future questions about allergies, asthma, and sinusitis).
If not rhesus disease itself, this certainly still sounds like an isoimmune haemolytic anaemia. These can be due to a number of different antibodies, although not to do with the common cold. The event that happened with your brother was probably the fetal-maternal transfusion, as zizzle describes. Rhesus is however definitely the most common of these. Have you and your brother(s)/sister ever had your own blood group checked, and does your mother know her blood group? That might be an easy way to figure it out.
You can also have congenital causes of UTI, which might still manifest as an adult, but nothing that I know of is directly liked to isoimmune haemolytic anaemia. Your should still be able to track down the hospital records from wherever you were born if you want to know more.
Also you can't have a "partial hysterectomy" and then a "full hysterectomy". A total hysterectomy means removing the womb and cervix. A subtotal hysterectomy is removing the womb, but not the cervix. Sometimes following a subtotal hysterectomy, you might go on to require a cervical stumpectomy, or an oophorectomy, or something else. Alternatively she might have had the cervix removed first for prolapse, then had a hysterectomy.
posted by roofus at 5:36 PM on April 2, 2010
You can also have congenital causes of UTI, which might still manifest as an adult, but nothing that I know of is directly liked to isoimmune haemolytic anaemia. Your should still be able to track down the hospital records from wherever you were born if you want to know more.
Also you can't have a "partial hysterectomy" and then a "full hysterectomy". A total hysterectomy means removing the womb and cervix. A subtotal hysterectomy is removing the womb, but not the cervix. Sometimes following a subtotal hysterectomy, you might go on to require a cervical stumpectomy, or an oophorectomy, or something else. Alternatively she might have had the cervix removed first for prolapse, then had a hysterectomy.
posted by roofus at 5:36 PM on April 2, 2010
at 3 months old i was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection. my parents say the doctors said i was probably born with it and it just wasn't caught.
I'm sorry I can't help with your questions overall, but this caught my eye; I don't think this is possible, as newborns have undeveloped immune systems, and any infection spreads incredibly quickly. My daughter had a UTI at 60 days old; she woke from a nap feeling warm and within 3 hours was receiving IV antibiotics at our children's hospital, yet it was still confirmed via ultrasound the next day that her kidneys had been infected, since a baby that small cannot isolate infection for any amount of time.
She had a couple of tests following that diagnosis, to see if she had a congenital problem that would cause UTIs -- basically reflux of urine from her bladder back up toward her kidneys. She didn't end up having this problem, and thankfully hasn't developed a UTI since, but I wonder if that kind of problem can persist into adulthood.
posted by palliser at 8:27 PM on April 2, 2010
I'm sorry I can't help with your questions overall, but this caught my eye; I don't think this is possible, as newborns have undeveloped immune systems, and any infection spreads incredibly quickly. My daughter had a UTI at 60 days old; she woke from a nap feeling warm and within 3 hours was receiving IV antibiotics at our children's hospital, yet it was still confirmed via ultrasound the next day that her kidneys had been infected, since a baby that small cannot isolate infection for any amount of time.
She had a couple of tests following that diagnosis, to see if she had a congenital problem that would cause UTIs -- basically reflux of urine from her bladder back up toward her kidneys. She didn't end up having this problem, and thankfully hasn't developed a UTI since, but I wonder if that kind of problem can persist into adulthood.
posted by palliser at 8:27 PM on April 2, 2010
palliser is right, if you even have a UTI for a couple of days, it can easily ascend up to your kidneys and become a pyelonephritis - you may be familiar with this if you've had a lot of UTIs. with pyelonephritis, you can get fever and chills, but if it is still not caught, within quite a short period of time it can become a deadly blood infection - sepsis. Infections move fast, especially in infants. You did not have a UTI from birth until 3 months old. assuming you are a female, having a UTI in childhood is not that uncommon.
I am not a neonatologist, a pediatrician/OB, or a hematologist, but I am a doctor (not your doctor!) and I think it is unlikely that your UTIs have anything to do with the antibody reaction in the womb, the most likely outcome I can think of from that would be you having transient anemia. It does sound to me like what you are describing is hemolytic disease of the newborn due to some factor other than Rh, such as an ABO incompatibility.
Some people are just more prone to UTIs. a LOT of people, in fact. The reasons can be anatomical, or just physiologic. If you really do get a lot of UTIs, you could get an ultrasound to check your urinary system anatomy, but otherwise, I'd just chalk it up to bad luck. and I wouldn't call you 'sickly' from the sound of things! There are a lot worse things that can befall a person than frequent UTIs, and I say that as a fellow sufferer of UTIs who knows that they are pretty miserable, but easily curable, and even preventable. as for allergies and asthma, those are other common problems that often go together, unfortunately, we don't really know why so many people get allergies and asthma, except that it has something to do with genetics and environmental exposures to airborne allergens as a child.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 9:11 PM on April 2, 2010
I am not a neonatologist, a pediatrician/OB, or a hematologist, but I am a doctor (not your doctor!) and I think it is unlikely that your UTIs have anything to do with the antibody reaction in the womb, the most likely outcome I can think of from that would be you having transient anemia. It does sound to me like what you are describing is hemolytic disease of the newborn due to some factor other than Rh, such as an ABO incompatibility.
Some people are just more prone to UTIs. a LOT of people, in fact. The reasons can be anatomical, or just physiologic. If you really do get a lot of UTIs, you could get an ultrasound to check your urinary system anatomy, but otherwise, I'd just chalk it up to bad luck. and I wouldn't call you 'sickly' from the sound of things! There are a lot worse things that can befall a person than frequent UTIs, and I say that as a fellow sufferer of UTIs who knows that they are pretty miserable, but easily curable, and even preventable. as for allergies and asthma, those are other common problems that often go together, unfortunately, we don't really know why so many people get allergies and asthma, except that it has something to do with genetics and environmental exposures to airborne allergens as a child.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 9:11 PM on April 2, 2010
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posted by zizzle at 4:40 PM on April 2, 2010