Has your diagnosis changed your views on having kids?
I’m a 29/F, got diagnosed February 2025 during my second relapse, and after a little over 4.5 years of symptoms and my mind has changed so much about having my own and even possibly adopting kids. My life has been completely rocked (I know all of ours have). All the years in college, basically wasted. All the years I’ve worked to get into a career field that I physically cannot do when after I get out of an episode. Everything has changed from me being super independent, not relying on anyone to being insanely, depressingly dependent on people. It has made me realize how much more I need from a partner than I initially thought I would ever need, which made me really re-evaluate the relationship that I was in and realize it’s not what I need.
It’s so frustrating because surprisingly the only person that supports this is my mom. She’s been here for me non-stop the last five years and has seen it all, and knows how hard this has been. All my friends thinks it’s crazy, but I don’t. My “triggers” have been two car accidents that led to TBIs, which pretty much within two days of both, started having syncope episodes, gastroparesis, migraines out of this world, as well as pain I’ve never felt before, fatigue that makes everybody call you lazy, and the rest of the laundry list of issues. Knowing it’s hereditary, and with my only known trigger being a TBI, I know that I have no control over preventing a trigger. I feel like it would be so selfish of me to have a child, they develop MS, and I can’t even be there for them the way my mom has been because what if I’m in an episode? Or the disease has progressed enough that I can’t walk and function alone already? Also, not to mention that to try to conceive, during the pregnancy, and if I wanted to breastfeed, I would have to be off every medication I’m currently taking for that duration. I see the way my mom looks at me with a broken heart when I’m having a really hard day in pain, not being able to keep food down for days on end, migraines that force you to be shut off from the world for hours or days. It hurts me to see her do all she can and still feel like she hasn’t done enough. She has sacrificed everything. She’s quit jobs so she can take me to all of my appointments, be there to advocate for me when no one would take me seriously, constantly defending me against my family, etc., and she had no idea that this would ever happen. So I feel crazy still wanting kids as bad when I’ve actually lived it.
Has anyone else had a change of heart about having kids post-diagnosis?