One
question frequently asked by younger women with breast cancer is
whether they can get pregnant once they've had breast cancer.
Chemotherapy can bring on menopause, but it is usually more likely to
do so in women who are in their late 30s and early 40s than in women
who are a decade younger. If you are still menstruating after your
cancer treatment, you are probably fertile and you may still be able to
become pregnant.
Can getting
pregnant decrease your chances of surviving breast cancer? No one
knows. There are no randomized studies —you can't conduct a study where
you randomly decide who should get pregnant.
But there are reports
from cancer centers that have followed the outcome of women who have
had pregnancies following breast cancer. These reports have shown no
difference in survival. But we have to take into account that this
finding may be because only the women who had a good prognosis decided
to get pregnant in the first place.
We do know that getting pregnant won't cause the cancer to spread;
either it has spread or it hasn't before you've gotten pregnant. But if
you had a tumor that left microscopic cells in your body, it's possible
that pregnancy, with its attendant hormones, could make these cells
grow faster than they would have if you weren't pregnant. This could
decrease the time you have left so that, for example, if you would have
died of breast cancer four years from now, you'll die in three years
instead.
If you are having
treatments that may impact your fertility, and if having a child of
your own is important to you, you should ask your oncologist for a
referral to a fertility specialist with expertise in working with women
who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. You should see the
specialist before you begin chemotherapy or hormone therapy. The
specialist will be able to discuss with you assisted reproductive
techniques that may help you to be able to have a child after your
cancer treatment is completed. Be aware that some of the procedures,
like egg freezing, are still considered experimental, expensive, and
cannot guarantee a future pregnancy.
You can learn more about pregnancy after cancer in the area of our website for Young Women. You also can find excellent information on pregnancy and breast cancer on the websites for Fertile Hope and the Young Survival Coalition.
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