Dr. Kyle Warren
Meghan Feir Walker
Lyme disease and pregnancy. This is a topic that has put immense fear in the hearts of parents and parents-to-be for years. They don’t want their little one to suffer, and they don’t know what to do.
The main question on their minds is, “Can a chronic Lyme infection be transmitted to the baby?” The answer is yes. I have lived through this with my family directly! However, that doesn’t mean you have to be filled with fear.
In this article, we’ll cover what women can do if they have chronic Lyme disease and become pregnant.
Understanding Lyme Disease
What is Lyme disease?
What is Lyme disease, and how is it spread? The bacterium that causes Lyme, Borrelia, is carried by ticks, and the ticks get blood meals from various mammals. From deer to squirrels, raccoons to buffalo, dogs to humans, they’re looking to feast on flesh to continue their lifecycle.
Since Lyme is a bacterium, patients and doctors often assume that taking an antibiotic will take care of the infection quickly. However, once a Lyme infection has entered a chronic state, it isn’t that simple.
Even if you receive timely treatment when the infection is fresh, roughly 10-20% of people who receive treatment within two to three months of getting infected will still develop chronic Lyme, aka post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.
Common symptoms
When it comes to Lyme disease infections that are caught within a month or two, the symptoms often look like a case of the summer flu and often present joint pain, muscle pain, headaches, fatigue, etc. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a bullseye rash that will clearly show you are dealing with a Lyme infection. However, most people don’t get the classic rash (erythema migrans). They can present a different type of rash or not get a rash at all.
When the infection has not been addressed swiftly, it enters a different phase, and symptoms can present differently.
In the chronic stage, patients often experience chronic symptoms of severe fatigue, joint and muscle pain, headaches, neck aches, joint swelling, digestive problems, and numerous neurological issues. Some of the most common neurological issues include neuropathy, trouble finding words, insomnia, anxiety, depression, bouts of rage—really any symptom related to the nervous system.
Doctors should never solely rely on test results, especially when their tests are outdated and unreliable. They should base a diagnosis on symptoms, history, and testing, and that testing should be updated and more accurate. Learn more about accurate Lyme testing here.
Can Lyme disease affect pregnancy?
Can Lyme, or chronic Lyme, be passed down from the pregnant mom who has the infection to the baby? The answer to this question is unequivocally yes, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view.
My family is living proof of this. My wife had Lyme while pregnant, which passed the infection on to two of our kids. Once they were old enough to be tested, we found exposures and antibodies to Lyme, and that they were positive for other tick-borne infections as well.
These are blood-borne pathogens, so it only makes sense that these infections can be passed through the blood from the mother to the developing baby.
This has also happened to many of my patients. While you never want your kids to suffer, they can be treated, so take heart.
Lyme and pregnancy, and how it can affect the baby
When we're dealing with chronic Lyme (not acute), there aren’t the same dangers as an active, quickly growing infection. We don't expect it to raise many acute problems in pregnancy, delivery, or during the child’s earliest years.
However, affected children can go on to develop chronic health problems, often affecting their neurological system, joints, and muscles. These can be hard to distinguish in young children because they can't communicate as well and often don’t realize their symptoms aren’t normal, even if they are extremely uncomfortable.
We could have an entire segment on treating Lyme and co-infections in kids, their risk for PANS or PANDAS, and how it looks in children developmentally. But let’s stick to Lyme and pregnancy for now.
Lyme disease symptoms during pregnancy
If you have Lyme, what do the symptoms most often look like?
Surprisingly, most women who have chronic Lyme often feel better when they're pregnant, at least temporarily. This is because the immune system has to shift how it functions so it doesn’t hurt the baby. This natural, normal process in pregnancy often happens as hormones rise.
Between hormones rising during pregnancy and the immune system shifting so it doesn’t hurt the baby, most of the time, inflammation during pregnancy actually calms down. Many of my chronic Lyme patients feel fine during pregnancy. While they may experience typical pregnancy symptoms like nausea and other common issues, for the most part, they feel better because of this shift in inflammation levels.
What triggers a Lyme disease flare?
The main problem for my pregnant chronic Lyme patients happens after the baby has been born. In the postpartum stage, your immune system swings back, your hormones rapidly drop, and there can be a huge rise in inflammation as your immune system reengages.
This is especially confusing to first-time moms. They don't completely know what symptoms are normal after the baby has been born.
As if postpartum isn’t hard enough for most women, for those with chronic Lyme, it can be especially harsh. From intense postpartum depression to heightened pain, the effects of Lyme disease become amplified.
My biggest concern for my Lyme and tick-borne disease patients isn’t pregnancy complications, but this big swing back during the postpartum stage. Add in more issues with sleep, stress, and other factors of parenthood, and this can make Lyme and postpartum an intense battle. The fourth trimester is what I especially try to help my patients through when it comes to Lyme disease and pregnancy.
Lyme disease management during pregnancy
After 30 years of advocacy and fighting, chronic Lyme was finally recognized in 2023 by the CDC and NIH. Prior to that, they said it wasn’t real, and thousands of Lyme patients and more informed doctors contested their stance.
Despite the fact that the CDC still hasn’t updated any of the testing recommendations or protocols for Lyme, their acknowledgement has changed the Lyme and pregnancy argument. Should you treat a pregnant woman or shouldn’t you? Are antibiotics and herbal supplements safe for pregnant women and babies?
Ideally, Lyme would be addressed and cleared before pregnancy. However, life doesn’t always go as planned.
The main conclusion people have come to is that you do want to address and clear Lyme during pregnancy in the safest way possible for the baby. But what does that look like?
Clinical care and natural approaches
This is a difficult question because studies are rarely ever conducted on pregnant women. Because of this, many of the medications used to treat Lyme have not been studied in pregnant women, even if some doctors still administer them during pregnancy. Supplements and herbs are rarely studied in pregnant women, either. There are even prenatal vitamins that say, “Don't take while pregnant” because of the lack of studies.
While there are different categories of safety for medications, not even something included in category A for regular people, like Tylenol, is totally safe for pregnant women, nor have they been studied much or at all.
There is almost nothing in category A for pregnancy because we don't run studies on pregnant people, and certain things can cross into the placenta, affecting the baby.
Because of this, we want to err on the side of being safe.
When we figured out my wife had Lyme in 2013, she was pregnant. Using a variety of herbal safety and reference books, I went through every herb, looked through every protocol, and tried to figure out what we could do.
I understand why doctors want to treat with high-dose antibiotics during pregnancy, but there's a downside to high-dose antibiotics.
Without studies being done, we already know that antibiotics screw up gut flora for the woman and the baby. We know antibiotics promote yeast problems for both the woman and the baby. Liver problems and other complications can develop while taking multiple high-dose antibiotics for long periods of time, and there are undoubtedly other unstudied risks and effects.
This is another situation where I think certain herbs and a natural protocol are much safer and more proactive while pregnant. Although about half to two-thirds of the herbs we usually use for Lyme and co-infections are off limits for pregnant women, we still have a few options that are safe and effective.
Please note: Oregano and wormwood are two of the many herbs that should be avoided by pregnant women.
Functional health considerations
Along with receiving help and guidance from a doctor, as any pregnant woman should do, you should take care of your body as much as you can before, during, and after pregnancy.
Support your immune system and the rest of your body with healthy food, clean water, sunlight, quality sleep (as good sleep as you can come by), and stress-management techniques.
While pregnant, additional ways of promoting detoxification are off limits because you don’t want the toxins affecting the baby. However, before pregnancy, detoxing with saunas, light exercise, lymphatic massage and drainage, liver-supporting herbs, and other options is highly encouraged.
After pregnancy, if you’re breastfeeding, make sure you’re following breastfeeding-safe practices for eating and detoxing so the baby isn’t affected.
What not to do when managing Lyme disease
Lyme is a complex disease that has confounded doctors for generations. This is why it’s important to find a doctor with a solid record of helping people get through it, especially when pregnant or breastfeeding. Don’t try to manage it on your own. That has led thousands of people down an unnecessarily long road of suffering.
That being said, most people with Lyme who have tried to recover or manage it on their own have done so because they were gaslit and weren’t getting any help from the medical community. Thankfully, today there are more options than ever before for accurately testing, treating, and recovering from Lyme and co-infections.
Please contact our office today if you suspect or know you are fighting Lyme and co-infections.
Fighting Lyme while pregnant
Going through this same battle with my own wife and family helped me understand how to help other pregnant women fight Lyme and co-infections.
It's not ideal to try to fight Lyme while you're pregnant. It would be much better to address it before getting pregnant because there are fewer weapons in our arsenal. However, Lyme can still be managed and fought. There are certain herbs that are considered safe while pregnant, or given traditionally while pregnant, that have high safety profiles.
If you are pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding and have Lyme disease, there are things you can do to be proactive, both for your own health and your baby's health.
Are you ready to learn how you can overcome Lyme and co-infections? Read more on our blog about Lyme, or schedule your free 15-minute consultation to explore a personalized approach for a helpful and effective path to recovery.
And by the way, when my wife recovered from Lyme and co-infections, the Lord blessed us with two more children, both of whom are Lyme-free! While the first two children did carry Lyme and had some health effects from it, we were able to treat them when they were a little older.
So take heart! Lyme can be overcome at any stage of life. You just need help to get through it.
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