The Fear of Passing On My Crohn’s Disease

As a parent with a chronic illness, I face a few things that keep me up at night, one of which is the fear of passing on my condition to my kids.

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) marked by chronic inflammation of the digestive tract and unpleasant and often debilitating symptoms like diarrhea, constipation, nausea, and pain. There is no cure for Crohn’s, which is a huge contributing factor in my anxiety around my kids inheriting it.

When I was in the process of trying to get pregnant, I asked every doctor I saw about my concern about passing on the disease. I was told by most that IBD was not hereditary so I didn’t need to worry. This didn’t sit well with me because a lot of my family members were affected by the disease: My mother, sister, and grandmother all had Crohn’s, too. One doctor did tell me that he believed there was a hereditary link, but there weren’t enough studies for him to feel comfortable saying it definitely was a risk.

Whether IBD is genetic was not going to affect my decision to have kids, but I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to prevent my kids from inheriting it. Without any definitive answers, I continued to do my own research and be vigilant for symptoms when my baby arrived.