TOPIC:

My Wife's platelet has been hovering between 20 to 40K since last 3 months. She is not on any med as her doctor just want to keep a watch and she just have odd petechiaes (1 ot 2) on her neck and arms.
We were thinking of starting a family as she is 30 now. Is is okay to do now or should be wait as her counts are quite low?
We are really confused!
Opinions??

This is something that should be discussed with your doctor. Every case is different. I personally would wait until you know if this is a chronic condition for your wife and/or if treatment is going to be needed. Good luck!

Sorry, I should have mentioned more details, she has ITP since Nov 2010 (almost 13 months), initially she took prednisone and then Rituxan but she had initial response and then relapsed. She had Rituxan back in April-May of thsi year. Next option according to her doctor is Promacta but since she is mostly sympton free ( except 1-2 petechiaes) hence she is not on any med right now,
Now we are confused about the decision on family planning..

Others have posted here that you should wait a year after having Rituxan before getting pregnant.
Erica

Well it has been awhile for me but I found out I had ITP during a pregnancy..This makes it harder to treat. I had the IVIG which is okay during pregnancy and some light steroids. I don't know anything about this Rituxan thing, so I don't know how that plays in. You should definitely ok it with you doctor. During labor you cannot have any pain meds so be prepared for a natural birth or emergency c-section. You have to be open to blood transfusion if the need arises. my Platelet count was @100000 when I gave birth and then declined very rapidly afterward, also my white count was really high and had to stay at the hospital until they leveled off. At my 2 week post birth check up my count was 6..That was when I was put on major steroids and we started talking splendectomy...2 months later with a count of @99...Just keep in mind that child birth means prolonged bleeding.....be ready for anything and good luck

Pricejac - there have been many women here who have pain meds during delivery. At 100,000, most can have an epidural.

well geez..I am sorry that was the reasoning I was given...

Yeah, that's strange. There are some women who have had C sections with low counts. I'm pretty sure they were given lots of meds for that. I've never heard that you can't take pain meds with ITP.

well I am not an expert just a recovering afflicted but every time I have had to have any medical procedure or iv they always tell me that I can't have the pain meds cause they will shrink my veins ...but all most of us have to go on is our own experiences, what the doctors tell us, and what info we are able to find ourselves and hearing other people's experiences might help someone with their own situation so nobody should try to say what is right and what is wrong...in every chat room or forum discussion their is always that person that knows all..well i don't know all and I just wanted to share my experiences and knowledge that I learned from my own life..sorry if it doesn't work for everybody..hopefully some of my info could help someone

Do they tell you that when your counts are low or all the time? People with ITP should stay away from some pain meds when counts are down because they can affect platelet function, but in situations where pain meds are really needed, they will make exceptions.

I would be very interested to hear on this one as well. I would like a second child but platelets are very low too. (16k-36k)

My platelets dropped very low during the first child but the prednisone was able to regulate the number I neeed to maintain pregnancy.

At birth I was given a transfuaion of platelets which bumped me up to 100k.