Disability and Pregnancy

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10

I’ve made it through my first trimester and now feel comfortable sharing with the world that I am finally pregnant. It’s been a long road just to get here, more than two years of “trying” and hundreds of dollars on ovulation and pregnancy tests that I was sure were faulty! But, I guess it was all worth the struggle, because now we are finally into that wild and scary new place, the world of eventual parenthood.

Funny thing is that everyone assumed our challenges getting pregnant were because of me and my disability. Actually, we finally discovered that I was not the problem, but rather that my husband was the one with the issues. Don’t worry, he is a strong man and can handle that I just “outed” his fertility issues to the whole world!

This is our first pregnancy. I have been a T5/6 complete paraplegic for more than 19 years. I’m 35 and have always been very active and athletic. I was a member of two Paralympic Alpine ski teams, have traveled around the world and lived a fun and full life. But now I am entering a world of the unknown and for the life of me, I have not been able to find much good, reliable information about being disabled and pregnant. The one book I have found, The Disabled Women’s Guide to Pregnancy and Birth by Judith Rogers, is pretty informative and a good resource, but unless your disability is exactly like the women featured in the book, there are lots of questions that still go unanswered.