It’s been less than a year since we got a diagnosis of IBD. My daughter was 18 months old. Her lactoferrin markers were high and she had been sick off and on since she was 8 months old. I’ve contemplated a few things that went wrong with her from pregnancy and possibly even what she inherited from me, her mother.

A study entitled Diet and Inflammatory Bowel Disease published in Gastroenterology and Hepatology says the IBD has an unknown cause too but, “Multiple factors play a role in pathogenesis of IBD. These many include diet, environmental factors, immunologic factors, infectious agents, genetic susceptibility, and the microbiome.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843040/

If we’re going to talk diet, it might be a good idea to talk about possible and likely nutritional deficiencies when I was pregnant. First of all, my husband and I used IVF to get pregnant. The drugs used which were fairly minimal because of the clinic we used depleted me of many B vitamins before pregnancy which I supplemented methylated B-complex with. I think this helped because my sore, irritated tongue got better quickly once taking the supplement. I would have to let you look at labs during each time of pre-pregnancy, and pregnancy to see what I was deficient in at what time.

I was extremely nauseas at the beginning of pregnancy and stopped all supplements except protein drinks till I was about six months pregnant at which time I got sick and then started taking more vitamin C again. I took about 12 1000mg daily until the end of pregnancy because I read if you took more than 5000mg daily you could have a baby born with rebound scurvy. Source Krauses’s Medical Nutrition book.

My lung collapsed when I was six months pregnant. I needed a chest tube, local anesthetic, morphine, and then albuterol breathing treatments for the rest of my pregnancy. I believe that medication could have contributed to increased candida before Jess was even born. I also had antibiotics 2x during pregnancy and 1x right after my daughter was born due to a urinary tract infection because of the catheter from having a C-section. “Children exposed to antibiotics during pregnancy were at increased risk of IBD compared with general population controls.” Article Fetal and early life antibiotics exposure and very early onset inflammatory bowel disease: a population-based study. https://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2018/01/10/gutjnl-2017-314352

Environmental factors that Jessica was exposed to were hair color that I used very early in pregnancy at 4 weeks gestation, and two more times during pregnancy. I also used regular deodorant and makeup. I was not as careful as I should have been. Also when my lung collapsed I needed a C-T scan of my lung so I had to drink that liquid medium with toxic chemicals. She also got that again at 15 months when I needed a C-T scan of my liver due to elevated liver enzymes, I think that was barium.

During pregnancy I was sleeping on a bed with mold and I didn’t know it. After Jessica was born she started reacting to the mold after she got sick with congestion and we used a humidifier in her room to help her feel better and recover from her bad congestion. I was told to test our home for mold and we had it and once the mattress was lifted Jessica continued a runny very congested nose and very large rash on her back until we got out of the house. This most likely continued the yeast problem.
Jessica had a strange reaction to the vaccines were doing on a delayed schedule where her ankles swelled around 6 or 7 months old.

Immunologic factors – we took Jessica to allergy/immunology doctor trying to find out why she had such a horrible rash on her back as well as why she continued to keep getting sick. Blood tests showed she was low in IgA and other immune factors. The doctor said she was immune deficient and we should not give her vaccines until that resolved. She also had IgE numbers on her lab test and later had a very bad reaction after having eggs no more than 3x within about a week.

Infectious agents Jessica got RSV at eight months old, roseola at nine months, an extremely congested nose about a month later where she needed an antibiotic. she got a very bad infection one month after turning two years where she had a runny nose that never went away. Two weeks later she spiked a fever ranging from 100.4 to 103.2 for seven straight days, this time her gums started bleeding and the dentist told us it was something systemic causing that.

Genetic susceptibility before Jessica was born I was diagnosed with Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia as well as dysbiosis, hypothyroid, adrenal exhausted. My immune system had been extremely compromised, my NK cells were extremely low and have never gotten higher on the lab test. I have multiple food sensitivities and anaphylactic like reactions to eggs.

The microbiome Jessica was not only born by C-section but I had two rounds of antibiotics during pregnancy and 1 round about a week or so after giving birth from a bladder infection. My gut bacteria had been low and off for many years before becoming pregnant. I had SIBO like symptoms a few months before becoming pregnant.