Breast Cancer Q & A of the Day: Can I have children if I have had breast cancer?

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If you are still menstruating after your cancer treatment, 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 that show no difference in survival. But this could 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 them 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. 

You can find more information about fertility, pregnancy, and cancer in the Young Women's section of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation site. 

Two other excellent resources are Fertile Hope and the Young Survival Coalition.

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This post is courtesy of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, dedicated to eradicating breast cancer and improving the quality of women's health through innovative research, education and advocacy.To support this important cause and donate, visit www.dslrf.org.