goes a little beyond the post, but here goes
I take thyroid replacement. I needed to up my pills about every month during both pregnancies. With my first, when I switched to a hb mw, I returned to an obstetric office monthly for bloodwork. Fortunately there was no conflict with that. I could have gone to my family practitioner for the same thing, but her office takes longer to get results in and there's more waiting for the lab slips, and it was just more convenient to use the other.
If you are replaced properly, there's no issues with the pregnancy/birth. I personally wanted my free T3 and free T4 in the higher end of normal so that I did not have dips between checks. I personally am not interested in TSH testing because I think it's less useful than direct measurements of fT3 and fT4 (not total T-anything, must be the free measurement).
For my second pregnancy I was more confident that I could tell when I needed to adjust dosage, and only got blood work done a couple of times.
Be aware that thyroid hormone moves into milk -- it is supposed to. This is not a bad thing. Moms with healthy thyroid glands are sending thyroid hormones into their milk also. It does mean that you may need to continue at higher than normal levels of replacement postpartum as some of the hormone you need for your own well being will be "used up" by the nursing.
Also be aware that if your thyroid problems are caused by autoimmune issues, there can be an "improvement" of thyroid function during pregnancy as the immune system is slightly dampened followed by a worsening of your thyroid disease after birth. So do not be surprised if you not only need more hormone while you are breast-feeding but that you need a higher dosage of replacement to be asymptomatic after the baby generally.
I am a big fan of Armour as more health promoting than synthetics. If you are taking just T3 and/or T4 and still have symptoms, switch to Armour. The best thing for your baby is probably for you to have the most normal blood levels possible of all the thyroid hormones. That we don't understand what T0, T1 & T2 do doesn't mean they may not be important for health. Certainly my weight never normalized post-diagnosis until I switched to Armour.
For more info on Armour and how bad the standard of care is for thyroid patients, read this letter to Oprah. It's great. You have to take charge of your own care if you're a thyroid patient. Hmmm, what does that sound like?
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/publicaw...rahletters.htm
