Written by: Halimat Olaniyan<\/p>\n
Versetta Brown discusses family planning, pregnancy, and parenting while living with sickle cell disease type SS.<\/span><\/p>\n Versetta grew up terrified of the idea of having children because of what she knew about how pregnancy could negatively affect her sickle cell disease. Initially, it kept her from pursuing family planning any further. Like many individuals living with sickle cell disease, she was told pregnancy could trigger all kinds of pain crises and make the current state of her disease worse.<\/span><\/p>\n Pregnancy\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Growing up, h<\/span>er parents discussed with her the importance of knowing her partner\u2019s genotype, to ensure her future children would not have sickle cell disease. Versetta and her partner tested and found that he did not have sickle cell disease or sickle cell trait.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n To Versetta\u2019s surprise, her pregnancy was rather smooth and pain-free up until the end. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel anything. Until about 3 weeks before her delivery, I would have these pains from my neck to my legs, full body pains\u2026 it turned out I was having contractions but I had no idea\u2026\u201d Versetta found out her pregnancy was complicated by severe preeclampsia \u2013 or high blood pressure in pregnancy.<\/span><\/p>\n When she went into labor, she says it felt easy \u2013 it was nothing compared to a severe sickle cell pain crisis. After her c-section, Versetta met her beautiful daughter, Autumn.<\/span><\/p>\n Parenting\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Versetta\u2019s daughter is her \u201cfirst love\u201d and she talks about protecting Autumn from some of the reality of Versetta\u2019s sickle cell disease so that Autumn could fully enjoy her childhood. \u201cNow, as she gets older, I have to transition to teaching her more about my disease so she understands why I\u2019m just laying in bed [or] why I had all the energy yesterday but today all my cells are depleted and I\u2019m too tired to move\u2026 because the reality is, someday she\u2019ll have to take care of me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Additionally, because Versetta lives with sickle cell disease type SS, Autumn has sickle cell trait. Versetta believed that those with sickle cell trait don\u2019t really experience sickle cell pain. This all changed with her daughter as Autumn describes pains very similar to Versetta\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve taken her to the doctor for it and they try to tell me it\u2019s growing pains but it sounds like sickle cell pain\u2026 the same remedies that treat my sickle cell pain work for her too\u2026 so now I believe everyone with sickle cell trait when they say they have pain\u2026 just believe them,\u201d Versetta explains.<\/span><\/p>\n Growing up, Versetta felt like a burden and overcompensated by taking care of everyone else around her. But as a mother, she understands that she has to start reprioritizing herself and putting herself first.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI realized if I want to be around to see her [Autumn] grow up and see my grandchildren, I have to start taking care of my health,\u201d Versetta Brown.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by: Halimat Olaniyan Versetta Brown discusses family planning, pregnancy, and parenting while living with sickle cell disease type SS. Versetta grew up terrified of the idea of having children…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[131,132,133,134,21,135,136],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22907,"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22898\/revisions\/22907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sc101.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}