Does everyones health go to pieces after having children?

[ijustwant8hours]

My second baby is 2 months old and DS is two. I now have:

An overactive thyroid (I'm expecting it to go back to being underactive again soon as this is what happened after having DS)

Ulcerative colitis - this started after DS and has now flared up again

Tendonitis in my hip

A rapidly collapsing pelvic floor

A cold

I was never ill before I had children and now I seem to always be at the doctors / hospital / physio! Does this happen to everyone?

I think so. The endless sleepness nights seem to take their toll on your immune system.
Plus lack of time to exercise/ relax.

Since having kids I have had endless health problems. Don't think I began to feel 'normal' again until the youngest was about 6!

(sorry!)

I'm glad to hear you do feel normal again - I was envisaging a slippery slope

Yes you get much more ill due to being tired. NOTHING helps the immune system like long bouts of regular uninterrupted sleep. Which we all know you just don't get with kids - apart from the women whose babies sleep 13 hours a night from 1 week old but I have yet to meet one of there ladies......

My DS is 19months and I am signed off work with (another) chest infection. I haven't been properly well since I got pregnant. I also have lingering SPD.

You just get run down, and DS brings home every cough/cold/virus from nursery.

I'm clinging to the hope that it will never be his first winter in nursery again, so it willnever be this bad again. (If it is, please don't tell me!)

Yes - worse if they are at school/ nursery.

When I look back now and I remember that for the first 6 years of motherhood I was:

• recovering from 2 (bad) caesareans
• had PND
• working full-time (having gone back to work at 6 months)
• worrying about my ill mother
• extending the house
• recovering from double pneumonia (in the middle years)

and had NO support from any family except DH (who was working in a European job and travelling)

I'm sometimes surprised I made it!

Hang on in there, it DOES get better. Just try to reintroduce some exercise as soon as possible - that was the thing which I could have benefited from I think.

I'm ill ALL the time. I think the longest i've gone between dr's appointments in the last year is 4 weeks .

My youngest is 6, why do I feel no better? oh yes, that's right, perimenopause sets in...

It is still a downward slope for me, but my mother confidently informs me I will feel better at 50.

We shouldn't blame it on the kids but...... Since my first DD 2.5yrs I have an overactive thyroid and a cardiomyopathy. Since becoming pregnant they have also discovered proteinurine which isn't pregnancy - related. It's another thing I have acquired since baby No.1. Hey Ho, we're not dead yet!