special feature
advocacy from anguish: bethany weathersby’s story How a mother’s struggle with a rare condition, fetomaternal alloimmunization, drove her to advocate for proper care in her future pregnancies and for other mothers in need.
special editorial submitted by champion steward partner, janssen 32
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Bethany Weathersby had two routine pregnancies and two healthy children, Liam and Asher. She and her husband were looking forward to growing their family, however, just nine weeks into her third pregnancy, she was diagnosed with fetomaternal alloimmunization – a sensitization to foreign antigens which stimulates the production of maternal antibodies. In Bethany’s case, it was exposure to a rare blood type during her second pregnancy that caused her immune system to trigger her antibodies to cross through the placenta and attack her fetus’s red blood cells. By the time her unborn baby, who she and her husband had named Lucy, was treated with an intrauterine blood transfusion, Lucy was already severely anemic as a result of hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn (HDFN). With HDFN and a lack of monitoring, Lucy did not survive. Fetal Health Foundation Champion Steward Partner Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson spoke with Bethany about this heartbreaking experience and how it set her on a journey to find specialized medical care so she could successfully carry another child and she and her husband could complete the family they had always wanted. She then made it her mission to ensure that other mothers diagnosed with maternal alloimmunization had education and knowledge about the risks of the disease and knew the steps for proper medical care and treatment, so that their babies could survive HDFN should it arise throughout their pregnancies.
