Our journey so far...

A year ago, just a month after our wedding, we decided that it was time to start trying for a baby. We were so excited and naive about the whole thing. I had watched my sister try for over a year to get pregnant and I saw how hard it was on her. I thought the sooner we started to try the sooner it would happen. We were beyond ourselves with excitement when we got pregnant on only our second month of trying!!! I found out I was pregnant the day after Valentine's day. I thought I may have problems getting pregnant but the thought of miscarriage was so far out of my mind. I thought that could never happen to me so when we got pregnant so fast I thought we were home free. I spent the next 4 weeks planning and bonding with my baby. We went to our 8 week ultrasound believing everything was perfect. Then we saw the empty black hole. It was the ugliest black hole I had ever seen. My OB wanted us to come back in 2 weeks for another ultrasound to make sure there really wasn't anything there. She said our dates could have been off. I knew my dates were right because I had been charting. It was the worst two weeks of my life. Not knowing for sure if my baby had died. I couldn't deal with a loss because in my heart I hadn't lost anything yet. I wanted so bad to go back and see a flickering HB but again we saw the same empty hole. I had a D&C the following week because I still hadn't miscarried naturally.

Immediately after our loss I was ready to try again. I knew we could get pregnant and I wanted it again so badly. There was no way in my mind I could miscarry a second time so the sooner I got pregnant the sooner we would have our baby. We waited until my first cycle after the D&C and that cycle we didn't "try" but didn't prevent. I guess I tried a little harder than I said I would. How could I not try when I wanted it so bad. We did get pregnant that cycle and we were so excited that it was so easy. This time my OB wanted to draw labs for my HCG level and progesterone level. My HCG was 53 at 14 DPO (days post ovulation) and progesterone was 19. Everything was fine as long as the HCG doubled in 2 days. Two days later the HCG was only 55. It was over. I had 4 whole days to be excited about this one. I had to wait another 5 days until I started to bleed. My HCG went all the way back down to zero after that. How could this happen twice?? What was wrong with me?? I was crushed. We did a lot of testing after that loss to possibly find an answer. We tested for lupus anticoagulant, anticardiolipin antibodies, antinuclear antibodies, and thyroid stimulating hormone. We also each had our chromosomes checked. All these tests were normal. I then had an HSG to check the shape of my uterus and my tubes and they were perfectly normal. At this point we were excited and thought that nothing was wrong with me...we thought we had just had bad luck. We began trying after my first cycle.

This time it took us 3 months to get pregnant. I thought since this one took longer to get then it meant it would stick around longer. I got labs drawn again. HCG at 12 DPO was 15 and progesterone was 20. HCG at 15 DPO was 86 and a week later was over 1200 and progesterone was up to 23. We thought this was perfect! Nice high numbers and doubling perfectly. I spent the next 4 weeks nauseated and exhausted! PERFECT!!! I finally felt pregnant!!! This was it. This was our miracle baby. I was nervous about the ultrasound because I wasn't letting myself get too excited until I saw the HB. We went and I took a deep breath before I layed on the table and then we saw it. The tiniest little baby. Just a little dot inside the sac and it was perfectly still. No HB. It was over. I was a little over 8 weeks and the baby measured about 6 1/2 weeks. I was a hysterical mess in the Dr.s office. I begged the Ultrasound tech to keep looking for the HB. It had to be there. I couldn't leave that office and face my family and tell them that I had lost another baby. They were all so excited about this one and we had stayed so positive that this one was going to be the one. I don't remember much of that day. I wanted to have another ultrasound the next week before we had a D&C. It was the same. I had a D&C the following day, November 13th.

Now what??? Didn't we test for everything before?? What is causing me to lose my babies??? We had the placenta tested for a possible cause and it came back as normal male chromosomes. My baby was a perfect little boy. We decided to name him since we knew it was a boy. I had been content calling them my angels until I knew I had a baby boy. Then I couldn't name one and not the others so we found two gender neutral names for them. Our angels are Jordan, Skylar and Gabriel.

After the third loss, my OB sent us to a reproductive endocrinologist (RE). Our first appt was Dec. 12th. He wanted to do a test to see if I have antipaternal antibodies. He had looked over all my history and what tests we had already done and this was the next logical step. After almost 2 weeks of waiting we found out that test was normal. Then I had more bloodwork drawn for more testing. This time it was for Factor V Leiden, MTHFR, Protein S and Protein C, and prothrombin mutation. After another 2 weeks I had a follow-up appt with my RE on January 15th. We went over the results of all the testing and basically everything was normal. So it is good and bad at the same time. Good because there is nothing terribly wrong with me that makes him think I will never carry a child but bad because we don't know what is wrong so we don't know exactly how to fix it. The only thing that came back slighty abnormal was that I have a mutation of the MTHFR gene. Some believe there is no link between this and recurrent loss but some do. It is not a direct clotting factor but can increase homocysteine levels which is a clotting factor. It can also inhibit my body from absorbing folic acid, B6 and B12. He said that 20% of people with recurrent loss never find a cause. That may be because there are things that just have not been discovered as a cause and therefore there is no testing for it.

So here is the plan. When start on the cycle we start trying again (we are thinking about starting again in May) I will start Femara. I will take this for 5 days. The idea is that it will help to produce a better, healthier, more mature egg (or two...aahhh!). Femara also helps to thicken the lining of the uterus to make a better place for the egg to implant. Then 5 days after I stop the meds I will have an u/s to make sure I have at least one mature egg. If so then I will get an injection of HCG to trigger ovulation. Then we go home and...you know! No pressure! Five days after the shot I will start taking prometrium to help support the possible pregnancy and also start taking heparin injections. We don't really have a reason for the heparin except that it might treat the MTHFR that we don't even know for sure is an issue but since we don't know what is causing the miscarriages we don't know if heparin will work or not...it might. My RE has had patients with recurrent loss and no cause take it and have a healthy baby...we don't know if the heparin is what helped but since it wont hurt I said I wanted to do it. I will also be taking baby aspirin up until I start the heparin. Heparin does not cross the placenta so there is no danger to a baby. I also told him about the urologist thinking I have endometriosis and he said if I don't get pregnant after 3 tries he would do a laparoscopy and remove any endo or if I have another miscarriage he would do it. So that made me feel better.

So the journey so far has been a rough one...I am hoping 2008 will bring us our miracle baby.