Healthy Habits: IBD and Pregnancy

The New Year is often a time for resolutions, setting goals and embarking on life-changes. For women with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who are considering becoming pregnant, however, the start of a new year can be a time of frustration, confusion and fear about how their disease may impact their ability to have a healthy pregnancy. To change this, the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) will launch the IBD Parenthood Project, which includes a new online resource, aiming to address misperceptions and fears women with IBD and their health care providers (HCPs) experience throughout all phases of family planning in January 2019.

Many women with IBD decide not to have children based on misperceptions about their disease and pregnancy. In fact, the number of women with IBD who are voluntarily childless is three times greater than that of the general population. For these women, one of the greatest known risks to a healthy pregnancy is an IBD flare, yet many are unsure of whether medication is appropriate to take during pregnancy. In fact, a recent survey by AGA of 286 women in the U.S. diagnosed with IBD who are trying to conceive, are pregnant, or have had a child in the past 12 months revealed:

§  65% disagreed or were unsure that IBD medications were safe to use during pregnancy.

§  57% have worried about medication harming their baby.

§  Over half rarely or never discussed their diagnosis with their obstetrician/gynecologist (OB/GYN) during preconception planning.

The new online resource, set to launch in January 2019, will provide answers to common questions related to IBD andpregnancy, as well as a downloadable patient toolkit that features visual and patient-friendly information. Resources include easy-to-digest lists of key questions to ask your provider as you’re thinking of becoming pregnant, a flow diagram outlining the various HCPs potentially involved in a patient’s care, a guide to postnatal care and provider locator tools. These tools are a direct response to survey findings that reported women with IBD want more and better information about managing their disease.

I have a chance to share this interview with  Jessica Caron, patient advocate;  Dr. Uma Mahadevan, AGA spokesperson, IBD Parenthood Project program chair and professor of medicine in the Colitis and Crohn’s Disease Center at the University of California, San Francisco; and Dr. Christopher Robinson, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine spokesperson, IBD Parenthood Project working group member and maternal-fetal medicine physician, Roper St. Francis Healthcare and Summerville Medical Center.

Visit www.IBDparenthoodproject.org for more information.

·       Jessica Caron is a proud mother of two, working in health care and pursuing a master’s degree in Healthcare Delivery Sciences at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. She has also been managing Crohn’s disease for nearly a decade.

Through national speaking engagements, written articles and posts on her blog, Chronically-Jess, Jessica shares her struggles and triumphs managing life with this disease. Jessica considers advocating and engaging with the medical community her passion.

·       Uma Mahadevan, MD, AGAF, is a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), medical director of the UCSF Center for Colitis and Crohn’s Disease and director of the IBD Fellowship.

Dr. Mahadevan is an expert in IBD, particularly as it relates to pregnancy and fertility, new drug trials and pouchitis. She is also interested in developing novel therapies for the condition, as well as investigatingpregnancy and fertility outcomes in IBD.

·       Christopher Robinson, MD, founding partner at Charleston Maternal Fetal Medicine, provides high-riskpregnancy care at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina. Dr. Robinson is also the medical director for Maternal Fetal Medicine at Summerville Medical Center.

Dr. Robinson has held faculty positions with the Medical University of South Carolina, the University of South Carolina, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois and the University of Virginia. He has been recognized as a National Best Doctor in Maternal-Fetal Medicine from 2013 through 2017.