Recurrent Miscarriage

As many of you know, I have always had trouble sustaining pregnancies. Miscarriage is one of those things that many people keep so hush, hush. In fact, most people don't spread the good news of their pregnancies until they are at least 3 months along. While that is all fine for other people, we have become very open about this. What's the point of hiding from everyone your greatest joy and also your grief? Especially for us when the two seem to be synonymous each time we take a pregnancy test. Not to mention, we get really sick of well meaning people who want to know when the next child is coming.

Maybe I didn't need to give a disclaimer to explain why we are open with this, but for us it is a part of our life, so we aren't quiet about it anymore. For those of you who don't know, we lost 3 pregnancies (maybe 4) before Camden and one after him. So we saw a fertility specialist in Orange County when we lived there. He ran an entire slew of tests and found nothing abnormal. Then we had a successful pregnancy with Camden and thought that our run of rotten luck was over.

Having this most recent miscarriage sent us back to a reproductive endocrinologist again to see if their is any further testing that can determine the cause of this. He reviewed my prior medical records and testing and feels pretty satisfied that it is complete and that I am one of those unfortunate women who falls in the "unknown category" for recurrent miscarriage. He will do another test or two but is pretty confident that they won't come back with any new information.

Normally a common cause of miscarriage is just chromosomal abnormalities of the fetus, and it is nature's way of taking care of that. However, in my case, my Dr. said that is very unlikely due to the number I have had. At this point it would make more sense if I had some kind of blood disorder that Heparin would fix, or a hormone disorder that progesterone would fix. I have tested negative for either of these problems. So now with my record and my test results, I have been given a 60% chance to carry any pregnancy to term.

Given those odds I didn't realize how lucky we were to get Camden. He is our little rainbow baby, and quite possibly the only one we will get. Don't get me wrong, we are not giving up and it is entirely possible that we will have more children. In fact, I had a friend who had 17 miscarriages and 4 live births. I just don't know that emotionally and physically that I could go through 21 pregnancies to get 4 children. I just don't think I am cut out for that!

In the meantime, we will keep trying, and we will continue to share our good news, and more than likely our bad news with all of you! When we do achieve a pregnancy again, my doctor will have me on Heparin and Progesterone. At this point they don't know that it can help anything, as I have tested negative for the things that they know those drugs help. However, at this stage, it is just what the doctors do, even though they have no idea whether it will help anything or not. It is kind of a "just in case" medicine.

We'll keep you posted as to how it all comes along!