The choice to have children is a victory for them. This option gives them a sense of overcoming obstacles such as illness, death and risk (8-9). However, this expectation is transformed over time due to suffering from past experiences. Thus, women suffering from SCA who get pregnant for the first time increase their expectations about motherhood and decide to get pregnant guided by the emotion, while women with experiences of pregnancy, hospitalization, and/ or abortion, are more rational and have fewer expectations of being a mother again (10).
In a study performed with 42 pregnant women suffering from SCA, 25 (49.0%) of these women had at least one painful crisis during the prenatal period, which led to hospitalization for treatment. Blood transfusions during the prenatal period were performed in 14 (27.5%) of women and is indicated for the improvement of pain crisis or improvement of blood indices when the pregnant woman have severe anemia (3).
The participants affirmed that, with pregnancy, they experienced more pain crises and recurrent infections, including urinary tract infections. Studies have shown that maternal complications are frequent, especially the infectious ones, bringing considerable morbidity to pregnancy. When evaluating occurrences of pregnancy in women suffering from SCA, urinary tract infection was the