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Pregnancy After Breast Cancer

One Woman's Experience

By Kate Riener Boyd

Three years ago, I was newly engaged and certain that my fiance and I would start a family soon. We booked the reception hall, bought my wedding dress and weeks later received the news that I had stage one inductal carcinoma. Breast cancer. We postponed the wedding and hunkered down to get through lumpectomy surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. For six months, my future was put on hold while the cancer was eradicated.

Cancer treatment surely presents challenges, but the aftermath has its own set of hurdles. As my body began to heal, I set about getting my life back to normal and a year later had a picture-perfect wedding. Had I not been sick the year before, we may have had an old-fashioned honeymoon and tried to get pregnant. But breast cancer can wreak havoc on your reproductive plans.

Standard protocol is to wait two years after treatment before getting pregnant. The highly toxic drugs have to leave the system, and the breast needs to restore after surgery and radiation. However, the true risk in getting pregnant too early is recurrence. Mammograms and treatment aren't possible while pregnant. I could be putting my own life on the line by having a baby.

Our baby dreams quickly became overshadowed by uncertainties. Would chemotherapy bring on early menopause? Would the life-saving drugs do irreversible damage to my body or my eggs? Would waiting decrease chances for success as I passed the age of 30?

I had another worry about getting pregnant after cancer: passing it on. My grandmother died from the disease in her 60s; my mother was in her 40s when she survived it. As much as I want to have a child, and as much as I want a daughter, how can I willingly create a being that has a greater-than-normal chance of contracting a devastating disease?

Two years later, very few of these questions got answered. The only thing I knew was I wanted a child, and perhaps the best way to discover what treatment had done to me was to attempt to conceive. I had a string of exams and appointments so that each doctor could give me the go-ahead. Every one gave me the same response: "Take your prenatals, have lots of sex and stay in touch so we can keep a close watch on you."

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