Is ME/CFS worsened by labor and childbirth?

[racheljs04]

Hi everyone, I'm Rachel, a long-time reader and first-time poster here. I developed Long COVID / chronic fatigue in December 2021 and went into remission in mid-2022, which I wrote about in this Health Rising article. I'm now 9 weeks pregnant, and the pregnancy has triggered another round of severe fatigue that's left me housebound and unable to work. Obviously first trimester fatigue is normal, but this feels exactly like the unrelenting LC fatigue / dizziness / brain fog that also took me out of work last year. I'm hoping it will improve in the second trimester.

My question is about labor and delivery. I'm wondering whether the extreme physical exertion of labor could worsen my condition in the long run. As this systematic review by Pearce et al. (2022) indicates, there's almost no research on ME/CFS and pregnancy in general, and in particular no one seems to have done a comparison between labor and elective c-section.

I'm already planning to use formula and hire a nighttime caregiver for the baby so that I can rest at night, as having even one night of interrupted sleep makes me pretty much non-functional the next day, and it's clear to me that the serious sleep deprivation of breastfeeding would be untenable. So the variable I'm mostly interested in understanding is the effect of vaginal vs. c-section delivery.

If anyone has thoughts on this and wouldn't mind sharing a bit about their own experience with different types of delivery, and how it impacted their energy levels, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

 

[TAllen]

I'm sorry no one has answered your question that has given birth but personally I would definitely go for the C-section! The stress and extreme physical exertion of labor and delivery just seems out of the question. Would you go out and run a 2 (to 12, 24?) hour marathon? That would be mild exertion compared to the full body work out of L&D. I could be wrong, maybe the body would go "this is different and we can do this without a problem" but it just doesn't seem to fit what we experience daily. Prayers that this goes well for you!

 

[racheljs04]

I'm sorry no one has answered your question that has given birth but personally I would definitely go for the C-section! The stress and extreme physical exertion of labor and delivery just seems out of the question. Would you go out and run a 2 (to 12, 24?) hour marathon? That would be mild exertion compared to the full body work out of L&D. I could be wrong, maybe the body would go "this is different and we can do this without a problem" but it just doesn't seem to fit what we experience daily. Prayers that this goes well for you!

Hi, thanks for this reply, and sorry for my slow response. This is exactly my logic, just hoping I can convince my OB about it now... Anyway hope you're having a nice day!