Anaemic and no one told me!

[oodles50]

So I don't know if anyone else has had an experience similar to this?

We recently moved house and so I changed my GP and midwife, which may have had an impact on this situation, but I find it so frustrating and don't really understand why someone couldn't have communicated this with me...

I had my bloods taken at 28 weeks at the antenatal clinic at my hospital, as I always end up needing a phlebotomy nurse to do it (I think my veins are full of dust not blood!). Anyway, bloods taken all fine, and as usual they tell me that they'll let me😂 know if there are any issues. I don't hear anything and so assume everything is fine.

Fast forward to my next midwife appointment at 32 weeks. This is the first appointment with a new midwife, and one of the first things she asks is 'how am I getting on with my iron tablets?' Of course I have no idea what she is talking about. It turns out that my blood tests showed I had low iron and needed supplements. There was a note on my records, but no one had told me.

To make things worse, I've been feeling pretty terrible but just put it down to firstly being heavily pregnant (not known for making you feel full of energy!) and secondly having a cold / cough, which my toddler picked up at nursery and lovingly passed on. Admittedly these things aren't going to help, but after I found out about my low iron it suddenly made more sense, especially the levels of breathlessness I have been having.

In lots of ways my midwife and hospital have been great, it's just annoying that this seems to have been ignored, what's the point of doing the bloods and then not really doing anything with the results?

Apologies for my little rant, I'm off to go and eat and steak and some leafy greens 😂

Eugh sorry this has happened to you 🤦🏾‍♀️ I hope you get sorted and it helps you quickly.

I had urine samples done in Sep and Oct routine ones at app & had been walking around with weird going ons. Thought it was just pregnancy related 🤦🏾‍♀️ Had a call last weekend (mid Nov!) saying there was a uti showing in October test & he then mentioned quietly it was showing in September too.

I was in a rush to get off the phone as I was at work but you can imagine the conversation would have taken a turn had I not been because it’s out of order it’s took them this long to notify me!

I’ll be following up after any samples and things now to be on the safe side including glucose test I has this morning

@snoopy18 that's so bad they didn't tell you, especially when we put all all these weird things going on in our bodies as pregnancy related. I spent a lot of time trying to remember if I'd felt this out of breath with my first pregnancy, so it makes a lot of sense finding out about the iron levels. I will definitely be chasing up everything from now on!

This happened to me when I was pregnant with my eldest (now 38). I was continuously ill during my pregnancy with stomach cramps/viruses and bowel issues. No details are needed with bowels. You can work them out.

Consequently, I was losing weight and laid up a lot as I couldn't keep food in me.

At 26 weeks, I was finally hospitalised. The pre-natal took one look at me and said, "Your anaemic."

From then on, I was on 12 tablets a day. I share this cos I darn well made sure with my following 3 pregnancies I was on iron from the beginning. I'm sharing also, so you know if you have any more babies to be on top of the issue from the beginning

I was borderline being injected, but fortunately, the meds did the job just.

Prewarning - if you have any more and get a lot of cramps, make sure you red flag it.

Babies are parasites, and if they can't get their food needs from you, they will feed it from your bones.

So, the cramps were caused in the other pregnancies because of calcium deficiency due to not being treated for pregnancy anaemia early on.

Yes definately chase it up even if they say yeah it’s all fine!

I’ve been short of breath too but have been taking iron supplements prescribed by doc through preg as I am prone to anemia even when not preg. Still will be chasing the 28 week results up once that blood test has been done!

Also a side note after my first I was very ill for the best part of 3 years. Lots of cramping in pelvic area,hot flushes,leg cramps,palpitations, chest pains just very extreme things. Internal checks / scans had been done several times & bloods had been done and nothing was flagging. Well - I went away and researched things myself and started taking a mix of supplements to see if it helped then isolated each to see which was making the most impact. Went back to doc and told them the magnesium was flagging for me. Turns out magnesium levels had not been checked and it’s not a common thing to be checked as regular bloods! They tested this after me taking over the counter supplement for 6 months and magnesium was still on the lower side! Apparently magnesium is a common deficiency and more so after pregnancy as the body doesn’t absorb it as well. So keep an eye out on this too postpartum!