A wobbly road to motherhood: Conception and Chronic Illness

(Note: This is not medical advice—just my personal experience, shared in the hope it might help someone else on a similar path.

I also want to acknowledge that I know pregnancy can be filled with challenges, heartbreak, or uncertainty for many. I feel incredibly fortunate for my journey, and I share it with gentle awareness that everyone’s story is unique.)

For most of my life, I carried a quiet fear that I might not be able to have a child. After seeing so many around me struggling to conceive and with chronic illness in the mix, fertility never felt guaranteed.

After being diagnosed with Lupus in 2017 and facing a steep decline in my health, pregnancy wasn’t even a consideration—I was simply trying to survive. Years later, as my condition gradually stabilised, I started to rebuild. Even getting a puppy felt like a major milestone (the toilet training alone nearly broke me!). At the time, I truly doubted I’d ever have the strength to grow, birth, and care for a baby.

A year later, again, I was feeling stronger and slightly more functional—we began gently talking about the idea of having a child. I’d been so inspired by women with chronic illnesses navigating motherhood. Their journeys didn’t look “typical,” but they were just as incredible and full of love. With cautious hope, I spoke to my specialists, and my rheumatologist referred me to a pre-conception clinic to help us plan as much as we could.

The Pre-Conception Clinic

I was referred by my rheumatologist to have a virtual appointment with two specialist doctors. This was both thorough and exhausting. One went over my medical history and flagged potential pregnancy complications; the other reviewed my long list of medications. It was overwhelming, but incredibly helpful—we left with a clear roadmap: reduce or stop certain medications, stay flare-free, and focus on stabilising my health.

It took nearly two years of medication adjustments and careful planning with all my specialists before we were ready to try. But just a few months in, a series of infections landed me in the hospital with urosepsis. We hit pause, regrouped, and decided to try again after our wedding.

Trying to Conceive

After our wedding, we dove back in. I was older now, that geriatric pregnancy label seemed a lot closer, and we didn’t want to waste time. I found my ovulation window using LH (luteinizing hormone) strips (I used the app Premom to track my LH levels) and my Oura ring to pinpoint fertile windows based on my temperature. But as months passed and each test came back negative, the emotional toll grew. Trying to conceive started to feel like a full-time job.

Snapshot of my LH strips to find my peak LH

At the 9-month mark, we went for fertility testing. Everything looked okay on paper, but my specialist recommended a HyCoSy (Hysterosalpingo-contrast-sonography - a specialist ultrasound that both assesses the fallopian tubes and flushes them out, which can slightly boost chances of conception in itself). We also agreed to move toward IVF if we didn’t conceive by the one-year mark.

Emotionally, I was struggling. The constant rollercoaster of hope and disappointment was exhausting. I devoured every resource I could find—sometimes helpful, sometimes not (TikTok often fell towards the latter). One that stood out was It Starts with the Egg by Rebecca Fett, which gave me some practical tips around nutrition and supplements. For me personally, I put on some weight, ate more protein, tried seed-cycling to help my hormones throughout my cycle and tweaked the supplements both my husband and I took.

The Positive Test

After countless months of negative tests, and throwing so much money away on pregnancy tests, I had a ritual: I allowed myself to test once on the day my period was due, just to brace myself for that inevitable negative.

When I went to the UK for my book launch (Exercise Well with Autoimmunity—available now!), I brought just one test. I wasn’t expecting anything. But to my utter disbelief, it was positive.

Shocked, I went out and bought more tests, while running errands for my book launch party, and rushed back to my parents' house as quickly as I could to test again. After over a year of trying, my body had done it. After years of my body not being able to do the 'right' thing due to chronic illness I couldn't believe it had managed to do something so incredible. There was relief, disbelief, and immediate anxiety about whether I could hold on to that precious positive result. It really did feel like a miracle.

Video of just some of the tests I took as part of my journey!

Resources I found helpful: (none of these are paid endorsements)

• PreMom app - I used the free version and would upload my ovulation stick to analyse my LH levels and found this really helpful to track when I was due to ovulate

• Easy @ home ovulation strips - these are what I used to test for ovulation, much cheaper than some other brands and worked well

• Oura ring - takes your temperature every morning and automatically updates this to Natural cycles

• Natural cycles app - I used the paid version again to link with oura ring and help me understand my cycles. You can also use this by manually taking your temperature

• It started with an egg book by Rebecca Fett- a great, evidence-based resource so you don't go down the wrong rabbit holes of making unnecessary changes to your diet or taking every supplement under the sun

Coming next: navigating pregnancy with chronic illness…