I have not… as far as I know, and from what the science tells me not for PCOS. For PCOS, you would not be cured by becoming pregnant. And I’ve not heard that myth personally. I’ve heard of it in terms of endometriosis; that signs and symptoms of endometriosis improve after pregnancy. However, I’ve not heard about improving women’s Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. And I have had many patients who have had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, we have managed to get them pregnant with Clomiphene or IVF. But they have their children and they come back because it’s the same thing; they’re still not ovulating, and we’re able to treat them with as I said the Clomiphene or with the IVF and they get pregnant again. So I haven’t seen that they have a pregnancy and because they’ve been pregnant once, they don’t need help getting pregnant the second time.
Because the symptoms of PCOS get much improved in pregnancy and there is a reason for that, people think that PCOS could be cured by pregnancy which is probably not true because we do not know the exact things and exact reasons which could lead to polycystic ovaries. There are many different interrelated mechanisms so, the general consensus is that probably the underlying problem remains and there is no cure for that. We clinicians can only manage the symptoms which are present and the symptomatic management is different for each symptom and the need and requirement of different patients are different according to that. So pregnancy does not purely cure the disease but it just dampens the symptoms – just because in polycystic ovary symptoms are due to hormonal imbalance and because of the pregnancy state, the hormones are stable and there is no hormonal imbalance anymore so, the patients feel that their symptoms have improved which they are but once the pregnancy is over, then those symptoms can come back again.
I wish this was the case, certainly when you conceive, because your hormones will become more balanced, you are less likely to experience some of those symptoms and obviously you’re not going to be having periods because you’re pregnant, so in many ways you may feel a lot better during pregnancy. However once you’ve had the baby, then you can have your symptoms return back to normal. Equally, every time we have a baby, it does change our hormonal imbalance so you might find that your symptoms are less or they could be worse, it’s really difficult to know. I think what’s important to be aware of is, if you have PCOS, when you then become pregnant you have a greater risk of gestational diabetes so it’s really important that you speak to your doctor and talk about how they can manage you really carefully to make sure that you are not going to have any of those risk factors for gestational diabetes.
