Blood tests whilst pregnant

[Lottyplum]

This is a question after reading posts+research. I understand there is a Def link between underactive thyroid/Hashimotos kicking off whilst pregnant+a link between Hashimotos+pre-eclampsia. Speaking from experience many years ago, for me this seems clear. So, just as mother's are checked re diabetes during pregnancy why in earth when blood pressure is rising, weight is piling on+then there's protein in your urine, is no thyroid blood test carried out+followed up. The evidence is there but no action is taken. It appears maternity services haven't improved since my 48 yr old son was born!!! Or have I got this all wrong? Your thoughts?

[HealthStarDust]

No. Your right. No routine testing for thyroid in any circumstances.

[Lottyplum in reply to HealthStarDust]

Yet mother+baby could be preserved from a very difficult birth or worse+the recent report into maternity services just confirms how poor it is! Surely prevention is better than cure but it doesn't seem to apply in the medical arena!!

[HealthStarDust in reply to Lottyplum]

When there is more money in prevention than cure, the tide will turn.

[Lottyplum in reply to HealthStarDust]

Think we will be whistling in the wind waiting for that one!!

[arTistapple in reply to HealthStarDust]

I know a midwife very well who knows I am hypothyroid. She says it’s almost overwhelming in recent years that so many women are being discovered to have hypothyroidism in and after pregnancy. She asks why is that? Well there will be many indirect reasons (outside scope of this post) but my thinking is that, we just don’t complain enough (in the past) we have accepted too much. It’s my hope that the younger generation are not putting up with the Sh1t we older hypos have done.

She adds an odd corollary to her story. The departments are having to order more and more larger heavier duty beds, for women to give birth on due to their obesity. Crazy isn’t it? Another case of the tail wagging the dog. Who is asking questions about this stuff?

AND a decent health service would be routinely checking bloods, specifically in pregnancy (preparation for pregnancy would be useful too, imagine having those useful blood tests to which to refer to down the line) and a routine check post pregnancy.

That is if we had a health service which actually cared about the health of women!

[Lottyplum in reply to arTistapple]

Totally agree - plus women who, because of poor care, go on to develop pre eclampsia and eclampsia with all the health issues resulting for mother+baby, then have to address the trauma that folliws !

[FallingInReverse]

Given how ridiculously prominent thyroid issues are, and how all encompassing the symptoms are, it is shocking how misunderstood, ignored and mis-treated it is everywhere.

If there was a profitable pharmaceutical for it, everything would change.

[Lottyplum in reply to FallingInReverse]

Think slapping doctors around the head+pointing to the evidence wouldn't have any effect on many of them! Only if they or a family member were affected would there be different attitudes+outcomes.

[arTistapple in reply to FallingInReverse]

Prominent? I don’t think so. Hypothyroidism is one of the country’s biggest dirtiest secrets IMO.

As for “a profitable pharmaceutical for it”, that’s been tried and fortunes were made. It’s one of the reasons we have so much difficulty being prescribed T3 - that is excluding the ignorance of NHS negotiators in the first place!

My thinking is that the ‘dead brains’ go into endocrinology to hide. It’s the perfect place. Patients are mostly a bunch of vulnerable females. What’s not to like when you are a doctor who desires prominence but can’t do the job? Big fish in a small pond. Who is going to complain and where to? They have their careers zipped up and know how to work the system.

Crikey I am in a foul mood today. Apologies FallingInReverse - certainly not your fault!

[FallingInReverse in reply to arTistapple]

I’m here for it!But call me dense, is T3 the pharmaceutical you are referring to?

[arTistapple in reply to FallingInReverse]

Yes. In the short term it won’t happen again. However if the NHS has proved themselves such a load of dumb clucks - well sooner or later it will happen again. Don’t these people appreciate what an incredible ‘thing’ we have here? No! Such is their complacency. Nobody seems to know what’s happening and the NHS does not have the leadership it really requires.

[Ontherun81]

I too had the same issues, having 2 miscarriages, pre eclampsia I was told you couldn't have more than once?! Which I had with my 35yr old son, a stillborn, 37wks gestation daughter, and my 32yr old daughter. I'd been told back in '85 my thyroid was very low and to keep an eye on it! No GP or Consultant that mentioned it ever did anything about it. Sure as hell would of given me an easier time when trying to get pregnant all those years ago. Hindsight is a wonderful thing eh? I've read these papers and my only comfort is I wasn't an awkward mother with lots of complicated issues, I had an unmedicated Thyroid issue! Xx

[Lottyplum in reply to Ontherun81]

Just throws up again+again how ignorant medics are! Emergency C section, trauma+ I came out f hospital with PTSD, but didn’t have a name for it back then. We wouldn’t have have our youngest, a daughter, if my husband hadn’t persuaded me to go with private gynaecologist after such painful experience, both physical+emotional. He was brilliant. Thyroid blood tests at every visit, scans to check development of baby, and there for my delivery. Normal delivery. No C section. No trauma. Best decision. Seems we have to save for private medical input to save ourselves from crap!

[Ontherun81 in reply to Lottyplum]

Thank goodness you went private! But then why should a consultant know more about the Thyroid than an NHS one! I was under a professor for the last birth and still nothing done! Are NHSConsultants & GPs taught differently? I had dreadful experiences each time, made to feel a nuisance as everytime I got to 27 weeks I'd have to be blue lighted into hospital every couple of weeks! It's only the one GP at my surgery of many that actually plotted overtime and realised what was going on! But now my Thyroid has atrophied and he's only upped my Levo as he admits he doesn't know much about Thyroid, and won't touch T3. I'm now waiting for an Endocrinologist appointment. That issue was raised by a consultant at an RA clinic when sent there for suspected Sjorgrens! I don't understand why one dept can't transfer you to another?! Or work in conjunction🤷🏻but having once worked for NHS its the attitudes that need an overhaul xx

[Lottyplum]

I'm with you all the way but the problem is, with maternity care under the NHS, you rarely see the consultant gynaecologist until much later in the pregnancy+by that time, things can have become serious, like pre eclampsia. With going private, I saw the consultant for all my appointments, he arranged my thyroid blood tests (and then I had no clue), arranged scans to check development. His pieces of paper opened the doors to ppl jumping to attention+treating me as a person+not cattle! My placenta stuck after delivery+he was on the phone for anaesthetist@1am to sort me out. The difference between NHS+private was incomparable - chalk+cheese, darkness+light! Plus I had a healthy daughter+I was able to enjoy her from day 1!! It would appear that 48 years on from my son's birth,there's been little improvement!