Today, I had my first day of Radioactive Iodine Treatment.  I had to leave my daughter at her Grandma's because I thought that I was not able to hold her during the treatment.  I decided to use this time to write my story.  I hope by doing so, other moms may recognize similar things happening to them and seek out treatment in a more timely fashion.  This webpage shares some of my experiences about discovering Grave's Disease in my postpartum period, the treatment, and becoming a parent. 

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2003  We decided that 2003 might be the year to try to conceive.  We got married in 2001 and knew that we should get going on the family thing since some of our friends had discovered that sometimes things don't happen as quickly planned.  One thing was though, we really wanted to do some more travelling before baby came along so we decided that there was still time while we were trying.  The other thing was that my sister was getting married in January 2004 and stressed that I couldn't possibly get pregnant before her wedding as she didn't think a round purple bridesmaid (ie. a "grape rolling down the aisle" I think, was her analogy) would fit into her wedding plans.  So we decided to wait and planned some trips, including a beach vacation in the Dominican Republic and an excursion to New York City.

2004   The New Year's wedding was lovely and shortly thereafter, we were on the beaches of Puerto Plata.  It was a marvellous holiday but the timing wasn't right to have a "Made in the Dominican Republic" baby.  We came home and around Valentine's Day, was the first round of "possibility".

Since my cycles were always spot on and regular, as soon as I was 2 days late, I knew.  I asked Chris to go and buy a test for us but he wanted to keep it suspenseful because we didn't do the test until I was a week late (by then, I knew there could not be any other explanation).  Of course, it was positive and we were surprised but giddy and happy.

The pregnancy went well, with about 6 months of morning sickness for which I took Diclectin.  Without it, I never would have been able to keep going to work.  We managed to squeeze in one more trip spending one week in New York; despite being sick and 2 months pregnant, we had a blast.

November Caitlin's delivery on November 3 was also quite uneventful (but amazing!!) and was about a 6 hour exercise in mental pain control: I did not have medications for labour because when I arrived at the hospital, it was too late for an epidural- I was 9 cm dilated.  She was born at 2:48 pm and weighed 7 pounds exactly.