Had a Baby Within the Past Year? What You Need to Know About Postpartum Thyroiditis

I think virtually all new mothers experience sleep deprivation as a result of their new bundle of joy. For someone who is supposed to sleep most of the day, they sure know how to keep us up half of the night. For working moms, the mantra to sleep while baby sleeps is just impossible. But your fatigue and sluggishness may not be your baby's fault after all. You could be suffering from a condition called Postpartum Thyroiditis.

After the birth of my first child, I was still a working mother and trying to keep my goal to breast feed her for at least the first year of her life. This is no small feat for a woman working full-time who needed to pump a few times a day. In a busy office environment, this can be near impossible. When she was about 8 months old, I began to experience crippling fatigue and it seemed that no matter how much sleep I got at night, I was still running on empty the next day. I and my husband attributed extreme fatigue to the demands of nursing a child, so I started to take multivitamins in hopes of boosting my energy levels. I lost my ability to concentrate found my train of thought wander of track. In fact, one time while paying bills, I wrote a check to the phone company for my checkbook balance and not for the amount of the bill! That one perplexed my husband. How could someone do something so goofy?

My milk production dropped through the floor. I tried fenugreek, which is a natural herb said to increase milk production. I even went so far as to schedule an appointment with a lactation consultant. It wasn't long after that I started to experience heart palpitations off and on, and this is what scared me enough to visit a doctor and try to find out what was wrong with me. I'd ignored most of my symptoms, blaming them on having a baby that woke several times a night. It wasn't until I started experiencing the heart palpitations that it sunk in that I needed to see a doctor right away, that what I was experiencing was not normal.

The doctor listened to my symptoms and noted I had given birth 9 months earlier. On a lark, she decided to test my thyroid function, but scheduled a Holter Monitor test and an Echocardiogram just to rule out a heart problem. Both the Holter and Echocardiogram came back normal. I'd gone to the doctor thinking that there was something wrong with my heart, only to be surprised to find out that while I did not have a tell-tale goiter; my body clearly was not producing enough thyroid hormone. I was in the hypothyroid stage of a condition called Postpartum Thyroiditis. Because I was still nursing my child at the time, blood tests were all that my doctor could do since further testing involved radioactive isotopes that would pass into breast milk.

What I found by doing some research into this matter is that Postpartum Thyroiditis occurs in about 5%-7% of women, usually 4-12 months after childbirth. The woman generally starts out as a hyperthyroid for a period of time. During this phase, the thyroid sustains damage, often enough to cause hypothyroidism later on as the disease progresses. The symptoms for a hyperthyroid are feeling warm, muscle weakness, feeling trembly, anxiety, rapid heart rate, loss of concentration and weight loss. Sounds a lot like what a new mother would feel even if their thyroid were not malfunctioning! This is why this disease is so underdiagnosed. What new mom doesn't have anxieties about their baby, especially first time mothers? Of course you can't concentrate; your baby is keeping you up half of the night! Even rapid weight loss, that generally happens after you have a baby, and more especially if you are a nursing mom. I can attest to say that I experienced most of these symptoms during the first few months after my child was born. They are considered "normal" by most doctors.

From the hyperthyroid phase, you transition into the hypothyroid phase. This is where you hit the brick wall. An overwhelming fatigue takes over and you feel sluggish all over. You may even have gained weight back. Other symptoms of an underactive thyroid include inability to tolerate cold, loss of memory, constipation, feeling weak. Again, all of which a woman could easily attribute to her new mom status.

However, the doctor did have some good news. She was confident that in time, my thyroid function would return to normal and scheduled blood tests over the next several months to assure that it did. In most cases, she said, thyroid function returns to normal within a year or so after onset of symptoms. She adopted a wait and see approach to my case and chose not to treat me with synthetic hormones and to monitor my progression with blood tests.

My symptoms still took a few months to fully resolve and I continued to live with extreme fatigue and a foggy brain, working all the while. It was an awful period of time for me. I was frustrated because my body clearly wasn't working properly and there wasn't anything I could do but wait to see if my thyroid would return to a normal state or not. My husband took over the bill paying (I was able to call and beg Verizon to please issue me a check back for that $300 sent in error, even though they would have preferred to keep in on account.) But by the time of my second blood test, which was done about two months after my initial visit to the doctor to complain about heart palpitations, most of my symptoms had resolved.

Occasionally, the damage is too severe and thyroid function does not return to normal. In this case, you would need to take a synthetic thyroid hormone like Armour, Synthroid or Levoxyl for the rest of their life. It is very important to keep your appointments for your blood work during this time so the doctor can determine if your thyroid is returning to normal. In my case, it returned to normal TSH levels by the time my daughter was 1 year old.

Women who have experienced Postpartum Thyroiditis have a 70% chance of recurrence. After the birth of my second child, I made a point of bringing this information to my new doctor, since we had just moved to another state. I insisted on a TSH test, which did not show a recurrence. Having suffered through a first attack, I certainly did not want to be caught unawares the second time. Many times, the hyperthyroid phase of this disease appears after a woman has had her six week check-up, so don't assume that you are fine if you passed that pivotal exam. Keep on top of your health and if you recognize any of the signs and symptoms listed above, see your doctor and ask to be tested.