MTHFR Fetal monitoring begins on Monday

So I got back from St. George last night and had my prenatal appointment today. My doctor wants to start doing fetal monitoring weekly to make sure that the baby is under no distress and that there have been no clotting issues.

Why would he do this? Funny you should ask. I have a gene mutation called the MTHFR (methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase) gene mutation. This particular gene requires folic acid to convert homocysteine to methionine (an important amino acid) and when this does not occur, homocysteine can accumulate and may have toxicity for the developing embryo. It also causes high homocysteine levels which causes blood clots. It is one of those in the medical world that doctors can't really agree on as far as treatment goes, etc., but what they do know is that it can be a cause for miscarriage.

We discovered this mutation about 4 years ago when I had a lot of testing done. The specialists will not say whether or not this is the reason that I miscarry, but they say that it is a possibility and therefore have treated me with high doses of folic acid and vitamin B. Heparin is another drug of choice, but none of my doctors have gone this route.

I told all of this to my OB when I was very first pregnant with Camden. He didn't seem concerned. He had all of my records from the specialists, and I think he didn't even know what that mutation was because I had to explain it to him. He did nothing special with Camden, and everything was fine.

Fast forward almost 3 years, and now he is suddenly taking a great interest in this gene mutation. I find it almost humorous! I almost wonder if he took a class and learned about it and a light bulb went off in his head that one of his patients, me, has this thing. So now at every appointment he mentions it, asks how I'm doing, tells me the latest research on it, etc.

This is funny to me because this is obviously not going to be a cause of miscarriage for me at this point since I am 37 weeks along. But he seems really hung up on it. He says that all of the specialists are now doing fetal monitoring and heparin shots as standard protocol to make sure that there is no blood clotting. He doesn't want to do the heparin shots arbitrarily, so he has opted to do fetal monitoring. So now I will go into his office once a week to get hooked up to machines for an hour to ensure that the baby is doing fine. This will start next Monday. My due date is 3 weeks away, so I'm not sure how many times we will actually do this, but that is the latest on the pregnancy front.

Oh yeah, another interesting fact about that gene mutation, is that it can cause congenital heart defects to the offspring of the mother who has the gene defect. Camden has a VSD, I wonder if that is the reason?