What about the increased risks for mother and baby of infection (due to white blood cell depletion) during surgery and labour?

The article states that almost all pregnant women with breast cancer undergo mastectomies. What are risks to the fetus of a general anesthetic? Are their other options?

Does the blood-thinning effect of chemotherapy increase the danger of hemorrhaging during surgery and labour?

Women undergoing chemotherapy are advised not to breastfeed. Is it the placenta that provides protection that is not present in breast milk?

The author of the article speculates as to whether pregnancy actually heightens the risk of breast cancer:

"While pregnancy lowers a woman’s lifetime chances of developing breast cancer, her risk is actually heightened in the 2 to 10 years following childbirth. Moreover, if a woman has been pregnant within the last two years and develops breast cancer, she is twice as likely to die from the disease."

My last pregnancy was within this time-frame. However, my cancer was hormone negative (not fueled by estrogen or other pregnancy related hormones). Could my pregnancy have played a role in the progress of my cancer?

The question that looms largest for me, though, is 'what would I have done?'

If I had been diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer while pregnant with my second child, what would my choices have been? I am resolutely pro-choice but the decision to abort a fetus that was conceived in love and long-planned seems almost unfathomable.

However, I was already mother to one child who needed me.

And living with incurable cancer has made me realize how very determined I am to live.

In hindsight (and as the mother of two very healthy boys) I can speculate that I probably would have opted to continue the pregnancy and undergo treatment, despite all the unknowns involved.

But I really can’t say for sure.