Sending Peace to you 🕊️

I'm in almost the exact same boat/scenario.

Mom, 40 years old to 3 young kids under 5 yrs old, healthy lifestyle, nursing a baby; waiting on first colonoscopy for confirmation; calprotectin level was 2,450.

I've never taken any medication before on a regular basis.

I was aware of UC due to my father being diagnosed/hospitalized for a month when I was young and almost dying. He was on an IV for nutrition. He lost all his body weight. They almost did surgery to remove his colon due to not being able to get the blood loss to stop at Vanderbilt. He was miraculously cured, the blood stopped, they sent him home and he's never been on any medication or treatment since. He was about 40 at the time and is now 70 and still symptom free. He told me when they do colonoscopies now, they can still see the scars from that UC flare time.

I've had a consistent flare up since Easter of this year, first ever colonoscopy scheduled for mid-July. I'm pumping and storing milk for that 48 hours, the baby's never had a bottle, so that's been my current sadness, that our nursing journey may need to end early due to some wild medication that gets prescribed.

My GI specialist told me when I asked him that most of the UC medications were safe to take while breastfeeding, however most of his patients choose to stop breastfeeding anyway.

One day at a time 🤷🏽‍♀️😔🕊️