Did anyone get diagnosed with a thyroid problem after having their baby?

[Aloha]

Was thinking about this after going on a postnatal depression thread. Have written abou this subject before and wondered if anyone had depression symptoms or anxiety that was discovered to be thyroid or you subsequently realised was due to thyroid. I am not writing about this atm, but am told it is very underdiagnosed and am thinking about it. I know my mother got to the point where she was literaly suicidal when developed an underactive thyroid so am really interested in publicising this.

MN HQ - please tell me if I should put this in media and should pay you lots of money!

No, but it's entirely likely I had one. May still even have one now.

Yet I'm on ADs for PND.

Have you thought about being tested? It tends to recur with each pregnancy?
I know how thyroid can affect depression because my mum was seriously thinking about killing herself

My sister was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid after having both her babies. The condition does run in the family as I had overactive thyroid 12 years ago but it didn't appear to recur after me having ds.

The consultant told her though that it's estimated that 75% of women developan overactive thyroid after giving birth, but that the majority of these rectify themselves before the baby is 6 months old and that it's therefore not diagnosed. I also read this somewhere else.

with her first ds she did show simptoms of what I thought might be pnd, not severe, but she didn't seem the happy contented mummy iyswim, something just didn't seem quite right. with her second ds, she recognised the simptoms of overactive thyroid ie tiredness/weight loss etc much quicker so was able to be treated quicker as well.

I can also state that about two years prior to my own overactive thyroid being diagnosed I did suffer extreme anxiety, panic attacks etc, I never told anyone as I'm usually such a together person that I thought I was seriously losing the plot. just thought it was exam stress (final year of school) so didn't want to admit to anyone what I was going through.

I have it after having 2 babies with a year gap between them. I think I suffered from some sort of pnd or pre-natal depression during the 2nd pregnancy and after that felt absolutely awful for about 8 months until doc suggested thyroid function test and I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Feel a lot better now.

I was wrongly diagnosed with PND when in reality it was underactive thyroid. It was only diagnosed when I refused to stop breastfeeding so that I could take anti depressants (GP insisted I had to stop although I've since realised he was wrong) and a psychiatrist ordered blood tests to prove to me that there was nothing else wrong other than PND. They were wrong, and the depression has never come back since I started taking thyroxin.

I was suicidal, and actually did attempt to take my own life with an overdose - hence seeing the psychiatrist in the first place.

I have read that a huge number of people diagnosed with PND actually have underactive thyroid caused (or exacerbated) by pregnancy, but I've only read it because I was actively reading up on the subject. It's certainly not something that I would have been aware of otherwise and I do think that it's something more new mothers (and more GPs) should be thinking of when PND is suspected. Maybe blood tests should routinely be done when someone is thought to have PND.

Would anyone consider talking to me for an article in a serious broadsheet newspaper? I think it is something people don't seem to know about and I'm quite passionate about the subject.

(It's OK MN HQ - I'll pay )

Message withdrawn

Yes I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid after birth of DS2. It took an awful lot of persistence to get the diagnosis and involved changing GPs and seeing a private doctor. At one point my TSH was 8.0 and no medication was given. Then it reduced to 4.9 and I was given medication from a different and more sympathetic doctor.

Started off on Thyroxine but now take Armour Thyroid which is on prescription but imported from US and frowned upon by many docs. It was the drug of choice before Thyroxine was invented and some claim is suits them better. Seems to suit me better but hard to tell because I have also suffered with fibroids and anaemia since birth of DS 2. This has stablised a bit now with iron supplements and homeopathy.

Seems most GPS are hidebound to the test results even if you display all the symptoms.

Might be willing to provide more info Aloha and would happily swap stories. I guess I must be more stablised now as I don't spend vast swathes of time looking for the answer to my symptoms and thyroid websites but is does still feature in my life of course.

And I went through the wringer to get it diagnosed. At one point was offered counselling and anti depressants when I knew that there was something physically wrong with me.

I was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid about 4 months after having ds, everyone including HV thought it was pnd, but I knew it wasn't as I was loving being a mum, I was just shattered and instead of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, I physically couldn't.

Incidentally, I was on medication until I tried for dd, and now apparently it's fine (she's 6 months and I was tired so had it tested - apparently it's just new baby tiredness )

I was diagnosed seven years ago after the birth of my first child with PND and then six months later with an over active thyroid (Graves Disease). I've never recovered or had steady levels despite medication and haven't worked for the last three years as a result. It was also linked to infertility when we tried to conceived a second child. We do now have a wonderful ds2 but it was a very difficult pregnancy due to lots of hormone inbalances and he was born prematurely.

Hi Aloha! I think there's quite a few of us around on MN with thyroid problems after pregnancy. I was diagnosed as hypothyroid 5 months after the birh of ds1. My TSH at the time was 14. I had been walking around like a zombie, brainfogged, exhausted, feeling ice-cold all the time, not losing any of my baby weight, and feeling down. Wouldn't say I was very depressed, but probably bordering it, as I hardly could get myself to leave the house. It was really my parents who diagnosed me, as they noticed the swelling at my throat. I have a brother who's hypothyroid and on thyroxin too, and my mum has just been diagnosed but her gp is refusing treatment, as he thinks she's only borderline hypothyroid (TSH5), although she has all the symptoms (weight, cold, fog, etc). Anyway, gp did bloodtest and diagnosed straight away, and put me on thyroxin. I was amazed at the difference: in a under a week i felt 1000x better! Also, it took until my thyroxin levels were sorted for my periods to come back.

Ds2 was born in December 2005 and my hypothyroidism was monitored very closely during the pregnancy. After the birth I had a very short period of being hyperthyroid, when i lost about 20kg in 2 weeks. I am sure those on a diet would be envious.... but i wasn't sure what had hit me at the time.. Now i am back to being hypothyroid, and my dose has only slightly gone up compared to what i started on. After having ds1 and first being diagnosed the gp told me that there was a chance that it would be a transient condition, but unfortunately for me this wasn't the case. I have since been diagnosed officially as suffering from Hashimoto's hypothyroidism (which is an autoimmune disorder), and this means i will need to be on thyroxin all my life. Considering this seems to run in my family, with both my mum and brother suffering from the same thing, you can only wonder if it really was the pregnancy that caused it... Probably not, but it just aggrevated it. Anyway, hypothyroidism is something that is quite easy to live with, as long as you are properly supplemented with thyroxin.

Great that you are going to take this one up and write about it. I think you are right in thinking there are loads of women misdiagnosed or undiagnosed. Am not just thinking about PND here, but also about those who try for number 2 and can't due to anovulation/drop in fertility (as Flip mentions).

Would anyone be prepared to talk to me and even - gulp - have their picture taken the paper wants it? I am particularly interested in the hyperthyroid turning to hypothyroid thing. I do realise I should probably have posted in media now as I think this could work.

You could contact me at [email protected].

thanks - this may come to nothing but it's something I would love to write about, and I think I know someone who would be interested in publishing.

Aloha,
I'm new here and just saw your message.
PLEASE PLEASE do write about this subject because it's something so few people know anything about and many people seem to go for years without diagnosis and they suffer in silence.
I'm not a suitable case study for your article (diagnosis by chance pre-pregnancy plus I live abroad) and I am fortunate enough to have been spared the depression / panic attacks that many thyroid patients suffer from. But my experience of an underactive thyroid (Hashimoto's - the autoimmune variety) was that it crept up on me virtually unnoticed and progressed over about seven years, I reckon, before a GP commented on my fat neck and decided to test for it.
I say the illness crept up on me but with the benefit of hindsight, I had plenty of symptoms: I had gained a lot of weight for no obvious reason and virtually overnight, I became increasingly lethargic, less sociable, felt my brain was less sharp, had digestion problems, headaches, dry skin etc. None of these 'symptoms' were enough on their own to make me see a doctor but the sum total made me feel washed out and old before my time.
I'm now on thyroxine and it took me nearly two years to find the right dose for me and in that time I have noticed huge improvements.
If one wised-up doctor had not ordered the necessary blood tests, I may well have hobbled along for the next ten years none the wiser ... I know I was extremely lucky to be diagnosed and even more lucky the GP prescribed the necessary drugs.
And yet when I told friends and family about it, most of them had no idea about thyroid complaints.
I know there is a UK web forum for people with thyroid illness and you may be able to find a suitable case study there. For more info on thyroid illness, Mary Shomon is an American 'patient advocate' who hosts a website in the US and has written very informative books on hypo and hyperthyroidism (I found her book invaluable (if slightly American), as you leave your doctor's surgery with a diagnosis and a packet of pills and that's it!) Sorry if I am stating the obvious and you know all this already.
Good luck for your article - I suspect the number of people who are diagnosed and treated for thyroid problems is a fraction of the real figure. I count myself among the lucky ones every day in life.