lyme in pregnancy

[zdienka]

hello everybody...

please, i am new to medhelp and not very good in searching about my problem.. thank you in advance very very much for your help.

i am pregnant, 23 weeks, and my diagnosis is lyme - just have been diagnosed. i have been infected some 2-3 weeks ago - insect bite, no symptoms, only big red stains on my skin. it looks it is not severe form of disease. i dont know what to do. of course, my doctor wants me to take antibiotics but terrible side effects for my kid...
and my questions are:

1) i would prefer  not to take pills and try some other medicine - natural one... have you any experience? i think i can do it, my immunity is now strong enough to fight, no organs are damaged yet... hmhm, whats your opinion?
2) what about the risks for the baby in my stage of pregnancy? i am very stressed about that... have read some articles, but they do not specify what is the risk for this stage of pregnancy... please help me. can the baby have some organ or morphologic damages?

[firemanswife21]

I just remembered that I wanted to tell you to make sure you are getting enough B vitamins and D vitamins. Prenatal vits aren't going to have enough. I had asked my LLMD this before. She told me to just pick up some B-12 especially, but if you can find the ones with all of the B vitamins, that is good too. And you can get some of the D vitamins. Make sure you are walking a lot. this helps keep your body circulating and moving to help it fight the lyme. i dontknow how many symptoms you have yet, probably none, but when your body starts aching you will need to keep walking as much as you can. This will help the baby too.

[firemanswife21]

First of congratulations!! You have been able to accomplish two things I am not able to do. Get a diagnosis for one, and two get pregnant. :)
There are lots of herbal type ways you can keep lyme in check with. My LLMD is a Naturopath and this is the best kind of LLMD to see. A regular doctor may want to do just 30 days of pumping you with pennicillin like mine suggested before he backed out on my dx. This is NOT what you will want to do. Find yourself a good LLMD Naturopathic doctor and they will be able to find a diet and herbal treatment, and the correct vitamins to take throughout your pregnancy. Then after your baby comes and you are ready for antibiotics you can go that route. If you have only been infected for a couple weeks, you will be able to boost your immunesystem and all of your other systems enough to get through your pregnancy with out problem. You are very lucky that it is lyme and not some thing that there is not way naturally to support your body. :) Message me if you have any questions.

[patsy10]

What the rash looks like has no bearing on the severity of the disease.  Mild or no symptoms can be severe symptoms later on down the road.  I would talk to your doctor more about it.

[libertyforlife]

Hi :-)

I don't know much about Lyme Disease at all, and don't usually even read Wikipedia, but I just ran across this exerpt on there:

"Congenital transmission of Lyme disease can occur from an infected mother to fetus through the placenta during pregnancy. The risk for fetal harm is much higher in the first three months of pregnancy than later. Prompt antibiotic treatment almost always prevents fetal harm. Pregnant Lyme-disease patients cannot be treated with the first-choice antibiotic, doxycycline (see below), as it is potentially harmful for the fetus. Instead, erythromycin is usually given; it is less effective against the disease but harmless for the fetus."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease

I think if I were you, I would ask about erythromycin if that isn't what the doctor already prescribed. Hope this helps and take care!