Anyone have any experience with having a baby with a partner with crohn's disease

[Amyy44]

So me and my partner have been trying for a baby for 10 months now. I'm ovulating, i gave regular periods, we have sex on and around ovulation but still nothing. My partner has crohns disease and we're wondering if this could be having an impact on his fertility. He suffers with crohn's, ibd and ulcerative colitis. I don't know anybody who has the same condition and I really want to know if anybody has managed to have a baby with a partner with the same condition? starting to give up hope now as we are doing everything we are supposed to but nothing is working 😩

My uncle ( has 4 kids) had crohn’s. So it is possible. I say had because he died of something unrelated in 2019.

May be worth requesting some fertility tests to check your reproductive health before worrying. It's not uncommon for some couple to take a long time to conceive naturally.

My brother has both crohns and ulcerative colitis and he has just had his 3rd child. He's known he's had crohns for 14 years now.
He's always been told it doesn't affect fertility

Thanks everyone. My partner was diagnosed at 19. He's also been told it doesn't affect fertility as such but certain medication can but I don't think he's ever taken the one that does. He just has infusions every couple of months now. Thanks this has cheered me up a bit x

My husband was diagnosed about 18 months ago but has likely had it for years based on the visible damage. He had surgery 12 months ago and started treatment 8 months ago. We'd been trying on an off for years with no success.

We received conflicting advice on fertility by the hospital. The specialist said because of the medication we shouldn't even try to conceive but the specialist nurse said we could try if we wanted and the risk was minimal due to it being him on the medication not me.

I'm now 5.5 months pregnant, with a little baby boy.

My general understanding is that if he's having a flare or has active disease then this can impact fertility slightly as the body is fighting itself however when dormant normal 'service' resumes. Whilst there isn't a huge amount of research into it, it does ring true for me as after the best part of 4 years trying I got pregnant three months after he started the medication (they said it would take about three months to get into his system and start working)

Sorry just to add Crohn's Colitis UK was a brilliant resource for me. It has information leaflets on most medications, the side effects including fertility implications. They also have a dedicated fertility page.

www.crohnsandcolitis.org.uk/

DH does and I managed to get pregnant while on the pill 😂

DH and I both have Crohns and we have 4 kids (I have actually had 8 pregnancies, sadly 4 miscarriages). It hasn't affected our fertility and I too fell pregnant on the pill. Try not to stress over it (easier said than done, I know). It can take over a year of TTC for some.

Dh has crohns, we have two boys now 12 and 15 (but he was diagnosed before pregnancy)

All was fine, however there are some things to know about with meds, for example methotrexate can cause birth defects, he was taking that but came off it to plan pregnancies.

So that is important to know about, also folate levels can be low in crohns just as an aside it can help to have B12 / folate tests just for his general health

Good luck, just get him to talk to his IBD team and plan for getting pregnant and be aware of any medication issues, there are a variety to use

Also i will mention Humira, this has been a wonder for DH, it is an infusion pen into the tummy

I am unsure about pregnancy with this as he took it after having the boys however.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4618138/

This looked useful about some of the meds and pregnancy