A few months ago, I had the opportunity to represent Mamas Facing Forward at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting. Over the past six years of attending this meeting, it has been very exciting to see the topic of reproductive health gain more and more traction. I’ve seen the topic go from being a single, early morning session to being one of the main topics of conversation at the meeting with multiple posters and sessions.
This year at ACR, I also had the opportunity to co-host the AiArthritis Voices 360 podcast. This podcast is produced by the International Foundation for Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Arthritis (IFAA). The goal of the podcast is to invite all stakeholders to take a seat “at the table” to discuss the most pressing issues being faced in the arthritis community. This episode tackled the topic of pregnancy planning with a chronic illness.
Since there were so many other stakeholders also attending ACR, we were lucky to be able to include input from Linette Dyer from MotherToBaby. MotherToBaby is an organization that collects and analyzes information on the safety of medication during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
It was a lot of fun recording this podcast, and I think we had a valuable and productive discussion. If you’re interested in the topic of pregnancy and chronic illness, I hope you’ll tune in! And afterwards please share your own thoughts and experiences with us – because this is a very important topic that needs to continue being addressed.
