Progesterone or other causes of miscarriage

After miscarriage #2. I pushed my doctor hard on possible causes… it’s hard to accept that “the chromosomes just didn’t fuse right” TWICE in a row. Seems incredibly unfair. One of the buttons I was pushing was whether my progesterone was low. I noticed my LP had shortened after the first miscarriage… still in a normal range over 10 days, but short for me. She wrote it off and said there are no studies supporting that progesterone supplements help maintain viable pregnancies. My midwife felt strongly the other way, that if a woman has had more than 1 early loss, it’s industry practice to treat with progesterone regardless as a preventative measure.

I pushed my doctor hard on this issue again after the recent BFP. She stands her ground on it. She even said she doesn’t know what progesterone levels should be or what dosage to prescribe etc. and suggested I get my midwife to prescribe it if she could. Truthfully I’m a bit put off by her response – could she not have at least tested my levels? If they were fine I would drop it. But she refused. Could she not do research or ask a colleague about what progesterone levels should be in early pregnancy?

I’ve decided to wait until I get my second beta back. If it’s increasing normally, I’ll call my midwife to reserve a spot for me and will ask about the progesterone supplement. I can’t help but feel that my doctor’s response was inappropriate? On the other hand… now that I’ve regained some of my composure (read: am not a total emotion wreck anymore) I probably agree that the progesterone is an unlikely culprit, but still don’t appreciate my doctor’s response.

My blood work following both miscarriages showed that my thyroid level was normal, even good. So that isn’t the problem. My iron levels are low, but that’s pretty common for me and I don’t think would cause such an early loss. Did I really just get unlucky?

In the worst case scenario… if we have another loss, I have an appointment with an OB scheduled for February to start looking into why this keeps happening. Please internet universe, keep your fingers crossed that things go well this time.

Pregnant for the 4th time

It appears that getting pregnant is definitely not my problem. For the record, we conceived my son on attempt #2. The second pregnancy on the 1st try, third on the 2nd try, and fourth literally days after the miscarriage ended. In fact, I wouldn’t say we were even trying at the time we actually conceived – I didn’t expect to ovulate for another couple of weeks and my doctor was pushing us to wait until I had one regular cycle to try again. Not to mention, we were (and are!) a bit gun shy after 2 consecutive miscarriages. My midwife called a week post miscarriage and indicated that there was absolutely no reason to wait so then I started using OPKs daily because she said the trick would be to pinpoint when I was ovulating, which is difficult to do post-miscarriage because your temps are fluctuating, CM and CP are not reliable, etc. Every OPK I took was negative. On Thursday last week, I had a bit of pink spotting in the afternoon and assumed AF was on her way, and was worried because it hadn’t been that long since the bleeding had ended and wondered if maybe the miscarriage wasn’t complete, as happened the last time. But AF never did arrive and instead my temps went up to what I call the “Pregnancy zone” – the temp I have only ever hit while pregnant, 37 degrees Celsius. On Friday, the OPK turned positive. I brushed all of this off and thought I was being irrational to think that I might be pregnant - surely the bleeding was because my body is sorting things out, trying to get back to normal, and the temp was because I’ve had a vicious cold that has kept me up at night and made me feel just generally miserable. I had read that OPKs could detect HCG but wasn’t counting on it so made DH do his “civic duty”* that night. On Saturday, my temp was sustained at 37 and since we had a Christmas party to go to that night I thought I would just POAS to make sure a few glasses of wine that night would be ok. All the while I was repeating to myself that I shouldn’t expect anything, the odds of actually being pregnant were very, very slim. Then that second pink line starting to materialize… and became just as dark as the control line.

Fast forward to today, after wondering if somehow my body is more messed up than I originally thought and somehow my hcg was on the rise again but was still due to the last pregnancy, I got the results from my first blood test and my beta was 644. Seems unlikely that it could still be that high from the m/c but, I’m going to have another blood test tomorrow to verify that the levels are going up. For reference, when we tested when the last miscarriage started, my hcg had already dropped to the low 300’s… and in the interim I took 2 HPTs that were also negative. My GP has told me that this is a new pregnancy, and I’m really hopeful (albeit, cautious) that she’s right.

Assuming that all appears to be going well after my beta, I’ve booked an ultra sound for December 22 to date the pregnancy – although it’s really more to reassure me that things are ok. If I’m still pregnant by then, I should be around 7 weeks so will hope to be able to see the heartbeat.

**Civic duty – my husband’s term for the BD. He will turn to me and ask lovingly if he has to do his civic duty tonight. For the record, I really hope this sticks, because I need a gosh darn break from all the civic duty he’s been doing since MAY.

More sadness

We were on vacation last week. I had formulated a post in my mind about how the waiting unfortunately doesn't stop when you get a BFP. Oh no, then you have to worry for another 3 months, especially in my corner of the world where you don't even have your first appointment until 10 weeks. 

Unfortunately.... On our last day of vacation we were out shopping, I ran to the washroom and saw red. I've basically been crying ever since. I didn't go to work today because my emotions are out of control and I'm going to try to see my family doctor. I need to understand why this is happening to me, to us, again. Is there something wrong with me? Does my thyroid go crazy the second I get pregnant? Is my progesterone too low? Is there something wrong in my uterus? Do we have chromosomal issues that we somehow got lucky and escaped with our son? I just don't know.... But once again my dreams are crushed and I'm not sure I can start over again. It's really, really hard. I so desperately want another baby. My husband is the best father I know and I want him to have more children. And almost more than for us, I want my son to have a best friend, a buddy he can play with. In the airport he was playing with other children in a play area and he was so, so happy. I'm worried that if I'm able to get pregnant again and keep it, the age difference will make it so they're not as close as they should be. Ugh. Really struggling right now...

The Second Line

You guys... Last night I started writing another post. It was an apology for being so whiny lately and an update on how I can’t possibly have that much sex for another month in a row. I was feeling crampy, AF was due and seemed to be on her way but I was excited that the next time I’d be fertile, we’d be on vacation in sunny Florida and maybe, just maybe, that would be our ticket to a BFP. I had decided that I would take a month off from temp’ing and wouldn’t restrict myself from things I love like wine just because we were trying, because frankly it was just getting old and I figured I’d be happier if I allowed myself some of those simple pleasures, in moderation of course. This morning I woke up, temp’ed as I do every morning and strangely, instead of dropping as it does when AF is about to arrive, it had gone up just the slightest bit. DH was out of town and I had a cheap dollar store test in my drawer so instead of wondering all day until AF arrived, I decided to put myself out of my misery, see the BFN and go on with my day.

Very quietly, so as not to wake my son, I creeped into the bathroom using my iPhone flashlight, tore open the packaging and got to work. The fluid soaks up really fast on the dollar store test and I saw just one line. It was kind of in a weird spot, almost in between the control and test indicators but there was definitely just one line. I recorded the negative test in my fertility friend app, told myself next month would be our month and picked up the test to toss it. Except something caught my eye. Down at the edge of the test strip was a bit of a dark spot… that seemed to be transforming in front of my eyes into the faintest of lines. Surely, it was wrong. It was from the dollar store afterall and probably wouldn’t even be able to pick up the hcg this early on. Would it? The faintest glimmer of hope. I ran to my bedroom, still fumbling in the dark with my flashlight to get out an FRER. Thankfully, I had peed in a cup, because the dollar store tests require you to use an applicator to put the urine on the test… I ran back to the bathroom, dipped test #2 and waited. The previous two times I was pregnant, a line showed up pretty much as soon as the liquid was absorbed. This time it didn’t but the box does say to wait 3 to 5 minutes. So I waited more… I was watching the clock, it had only been about an entire lifetime 30 seconds. And then I saw it. The second line. THE SECOND LINE!!!