Recurrent Miscarriage Thread

[Tasha]

I don't think it's the most common cause tbh. Clotting disorders are IMO the leading cause. That's just from being around loses since my first stillbirth eight and a half years ago and then being around recurrent loses since 2008. I'd get the clotting bloods, thyroid etc done before nkc.

I have nkc the treatment is steroids to suppress the immune system the amount and when you start depends on your dr, for me it was 25mg from ovulation until 12 weeks when I weaned off. That didn't work for me but I had anti malaria tablets added in too (take them every day even before ttc) and that (alongside the steroids, baby aspirin twice a day, 160mg clexane, progesterone twice a day, iron, vit d, multi vit) worked.

 

[pinkpassion]

What do you do if recurrent losses and all bloodwork comes back normal? My ob suggested going to an re, but would they do more than the ob? Hopefully this baby will be born and I told my ob I want to finish my workup (didn't get to do hysteroscopy, because I fell preg) so that's the last thing she said she could do before sending me to an re... if we decide any more children would it be worth it to go to re or just keep trying and eventually one will stick??

 

[stuckinoki]

An RE is a good place to go when typical OB testing has run its course...they have a much better knowledge of the endocrine system and often are able to delve a bit deeper into some of the standard testing.

I met with 3 and adored them, I felt like because their specialty was geared more towards my body and it's reaction and feedback cycles, I was able to learn more from them than the OB who can do basic testing but not much else than throw some fertility drugs at an indiagnosed problem.

That's just my opinion though.

 

[hmmohrma]

My OB also told us he couldn't answer any more questions. The basic testing he could do all showed no problems. He was about to start us on progesterone as a precaution, but I started bleeding the day before our appointment. We LOVE our OB. He is kind, caring, and generally wants to help. He picked an RE that he feels will be good for our personalities and who has an awesome track record. As far as we know, we will begin with genetic mapping to see if there is a chromosomal issue or translocation that wouldn't show up in basic hormone/ thyroid/ clotting blood work. I am so excited to be moving on. I can't handle just trying and hoping for a sticky any longer. We are ready to find a cause and/ or move on to the adoption process. We waited so long to finish school, buy a house, be settled in our careers, get married....WE ARE SO READY!!!!!

Rant time: I'm so tired of my family and friends coming up accidentally pregnant with unwanted babies and telling me to RELAX! I know we all feel that way, but I just had to get it out. I'm also tired of people telling me that I should do this or that for fertility issues. People just don't seem to understand that we conceive easily...that is not the problem. Okay, okay, rant over.

 

[stuckinoki]

They mean well, but infertility can't be cured by "relaxing" and that's what I've always said when some well-wisher makes that comment.

It's a struggle, every single day.

 

[pinkpassion]

We've also both been karyotyped, completely normal. I think I'll proceed with hysteroscopy when time is right and if that's normal go on to the re before deciding to try again for any more kids!! This thread is so incredibly helpful!!!

It's so hard to go through recurrent loss.. especially when people's well-meaning comments strike deep!!! Especially when people say, "you should just adopt", or "just hire a surrogate "... I know those are all great options but it makes me want to B***-slap some people because I'm totally not there... and I believe for those decisions you have to be 100% there, otherwise resentment and stuff creeps in (at least in my case).. anyway sorry about that rant. It's just hard to go through everything we all go through and no one in our everyday lives have to deal with anything like this and NO one understands at all.. not their problem, so not a big deal!!!! I'm sorry you ladies are here and many/most of you with longer histories than me.. it's just a hard road!!!

 

[tag74]

My RE literally over treats me. That's all I can think of. At my OB I'm a number, at the RE they literally oversee me like a hawk and give me everything I want. Blood work, Ultrasounds etc.

 

[dairymomma]

I've never seen an RE but if I continue to have issues, I will likely ask to be referred.

And I've been there with well meaning family/friends too but they stopped for the most part once I started talking about my losses more. I think they realized I didn't want to hear 'Just relax and it'll happen when it's meant to happen' right after I'd had another miscarriage. Now I get genuine interest when I talk about my history/testing/treatment plans and those silly platitudes have gone away for the most part.

 

[filipenko32]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to stop by and quickly tell my story. I had 4 miscarriages over 1 and a half years. I was in despair and very depressed. They found nothing wrong with me. I was 31 at the time. I saw many consultants and paid a fortune in time and money. They put me on some treatment 'for the sake of it' which included steroids and aspirin. I had 2 successful pregnancies this way one straight after the other - my daughters are 13 months apart. I went to live in Australia and have a pretty carefree life with healthy eating, sunshine exercise and fun and now I find myself successfully pregnant with number 3 (no treatment, no 2 week wait stress and no testing because it was an unexpected pregnancy). If no cause is found after investigations and I was going though all this again in hindsight I'd put it down to very bad luck! I hope that gives someone hope on here I sure needed some hope stories when I was going through this! I'm 100% sure that all of you on here will have your babies one day soon.

 

[filipenko32]

Ps just reading a few recent posts - NONE of my family and friends bar none understood my despair over this or understood anything about rpl and how it makes you feel. Their comments were always ridiculous to me. And secretly I still haven't forgiven half of them!!!

 

[hmmohrma]

This is definitely a helpful thread. I also find it helpful that many of the RPL blogs I've found are now scarcely posted on because the women are now mothers. I know we are at the beginning of this journey, but I am also 31 and have had 3 losses in 1.5 years. I always worried conceiving would be difficult because it took my parents 7 years to have me (right after they adopted my sister, of course). I never even considered we'd be dealing with so much grief. The family and friends always mean well, but they will never understand what it's like. It is unfortunate that we are all here, but I feel so lucky that we have this option. I don't know what I would have done dealing with all of this before the internet was here to connect me. Our RE says about 2% of the population have 3 or more consecutive losses with no live babies, and I have met only one woman in person that went through it. She also has a little boy now, so here's to sticky dust for us all! We are also so happy that our RE only takes payment for IVF after a live baby goes home. That is such a huge weight off of our shoulders. The idea of that being our only option (possibly...we're not actually there yet), spending all that money, and still possibly not having a baby was terrible. We are not interested in donors or surrogacy, and we would like to go straight to the adoption process if we run out of options for me to carry our genetic baby. We certainly don't have the money to spend on IVF AND adoption....that was a lot...my brain is all wired up after just getting home!

 

[pinkpassion]

One thing that brought me a little bit of comfort was that my ob said that her friend who is the re she was going to send me to after discussing my case with her, said that with women with rpl 78% will go on to have a healthy live baby even if no treatment or diagnosis is made. So I kind of held in to that because I got my dd, she is a true miracle and I honestly thought that I was past all the miscarriage and heartache stuff, I kind of got cocky and felt like I was "fixed" with taking progesterone (only thing I took with her) and started it again right away with my last pregnancy. Nope mmc again.. so I'm not past it , progesterone deficiency wasn't the problem at least for that one.. but this time I'm on progesterone and baby aspirin....
Anyway all that to say those statistics seemed promising that even without treatment or diagnosis that high of a percentage went on to have a healthy baby!!!

 

[PrincessPearl]

Hi ladies! I have been lurking many boards for over a year now , but just joined a few days ago. I am having a hard time finding a category where I fit in, but I think with this one being so active and my current state, I belong here. My story is a veeeeeerrrrrrry long one, but I will try to sum it up (which is hard given there is so much that happened in the long time frame). I got married young (at 18) almost 12 years ago because when I met my husband, he was diagnosed with cancer. It made us realize life is short so why wait on things you are sure of. He was only 21 at the time, so a charity organization paid for the freezing of sperm (which was a good thing, more on that later). I got pregnant with our daughter a year later unexpectedly, which was a miracle given the closeness to his final cancer treatment. A few days after she was born, my husband was told his cancer came back, so he endured a treatment plan that was way more aggressive than the first time (he is still to this day 10 1/2 years later cancer free). Unfortunately, the second round of treatment left him with fertility problems. When our daughter was 3, we started trying for baby #2. We tried for 6 years on our own, and all that happened was a miscarriage in 2009. We went to the clinic where his were frozen in Aug. 2014. We were told our only chance to have more kids was through ivf (specifically icsi due to not having an unlimited supply of "the goods"). We started our first fresh cycle in Sep. 2014, embryo transfer in Oct, in Nov, Miscarriage at 5 weeks. We had 2 FETs, one in Feb 2015 and one in May, both . Fresh cycle started in Sep. 2015, transfer in Oct, and currently miscarrying at 5w+6. Given all that we have been through, it is hard for me to see where I fit in. Secondary infertility? Multiple failed ivfs? Given the pain of the multiple miscarriage is the pain that hurts the most, I guess I belong here. That is if you ladies will have me

 

[pinkpassion]

Princesspearl, you are certainly welcome here, I'm sorry for all your pain and heartache!!!! It's so hard to go through!!!! I can't imagine all you've been through, but I know from being on this site there is always hope!!

 

[stuckinoki]

This is definitely a helpful thread. I also find it helpful that many of the RPL blogs I've found are now scarcely posted on because the women are now mothers. I know we are at the beginning of this journey, but I am also 31 and have had 3 losses in 1.5 years. I always worried conceiving would be difficult because it took my parents 7 years to have me (right after they adopted my sister, of course). I never even considered we'd be dealing with so much grief. The family and friends always mean well, but they will never understand what it's like. It is unfortunate that we are all here, but I feel so lucky that we have this option. I don't know what I would have done dealing with all of this before the internet was here to connect me. Our RE says about 2% of the population have 3 or more consecutive losses with no live babies, and I have met only one woman in person that went through it. She also has a little boy now, so here's to sticky dust for us all! We are also so happy that our RE only takes payment for IVF after a live baby goes home. That is such a huge weight off of our shoulders. The idea of that being our only option (possibly...we're not actually there yet), spending all that money, and still possibly not having a baby was terrible. We are not interested in donors or surrogacy, and we would like to go straight to the adoption process if we run out of options for me to carry our genetic baby. We certainly don't have the money to spend on IVF AND adoption....that was a lot...my brain is all wired up after just getting home!

My thought process is that if your parents had troubles too, you may be looking at something genetic (which to me personally is better than it just being unexplained and the rest of your family having a bunch of children with no issues)

The 2% drops even lower with more miscarriages so 3 losses < 2%, 4 losses < .5% and so on and so on.

My Re is very blunt with us (which I loved because I was so tired of people just shrugging their shoulders and saying I don't know what to tell you) but he said that we still know so little about the reproductive process that about half of the women never get a true answer as to why they can't carry/ conceive....which isn't what any woman wants to hear but at least we were able to keep our hopes in check. This information also really pushed me to start researching on my own (with the help of all of the lovely ladies on this thread who might as well be doctors themselves) the more information I gathered and researched, the more confident I felt.

RPL is a journey that no woman should ever have to take.

We had 15 losses before I got one to stick (with the help of dr. Shehata's protocol from the UK, approved to give it a shot from my own RE, because he said "it can't hurt so let's give it a try")

I am not sure where I was going with this but wanted to tell you that we all wear similar shoes here and some journeys are longer than others, keep your chin up and don't settle for anything less than what you want.

 

[hmmohrma]

PrincessPearl - I just joined this thread because I'm tired of joining BFP and expecting so and so month and then going through a mc and having to bow out. Having to go through the worry of DH's health on top of the pregnancy things must be sooo difficult. I know I need my DH every single day for strength, and I don't know what I would do. I'm glad you found B&B. It is a great help for me!

 

[dairymomma]

This is definitely a helpful thread. I also find it helpful that many of the RPL blogs I've found are now scarcely posted on because the women are now mothers. I know we are at the beginning of this journey, but I am also 31 and have had 3 losses in 1.5 years. I always worried conceiving would be difficult because it took my parents 7 years to have me (right after they adopted my sister, of course). I never even considered we'd be dealing with so much grief. The family and friends always mean well, but they will never understand what it's like. It is unfortunate that we are all here, but I feel so lucky that we have this option. I don't know what I would have done dealing with all of this before the internet was here to connect me. Our RE says about 2% of the population have 3 or more consecutive losses with no live babies, and I have met only one woman in person that went through it. She also has a little boy now, so here's to sticky dust for us all! We are also so happy that our RE only takes payment for IVF after a live baby goes home. That is such a huge weight off of our shoulders. The idea of that being our only option (possibly...we're not actually there yet), spending all that money, and still possibly not having a baby was terrible. We are not interested in donors or surrogacy, and we would like to go straight to the adoption process if we run out of options for me to carry our genetic baby. We certainly don't have the money to spend on IVF AND adoption....that was a lot...my brain is all wired up after just getting home!

My thought process is that if your parents had troubles too, you may be looking at something genetic (which to me personally is better than it just being unexplained and the rest of your family having a bunch of children with no issues)

The 2% drops even lower with more miscarriages so 3 losses < 2%, 4 losses < .5% and so on and so on.

My Re is very blunt with us (which I loved because I was so tired of people just shrugging their shoulders and saying I don't know what to tell you) but he said that we still know so little about the reproductive process that about half of the women never get a true answer as to why they can't carry/ conceive....which isn't what any woman wants to hear but at least we were able to keep our hopes in check. This information also really pushed me to start researching on my own (with the help of all of the lovely ladies on this thread who might as well be doctors themselves) the more information I gathered and researched, the more confident I felt.

RPL is a journey that no woman should ever have to take.

We had 15 losses before I got one to stick (with the help of dr. Shehata's protocol from the UK, approved to give it a shot from my own RE, because he said "it can't hurt so let's give it a try")

I am not sure where I was going with this but wanted to tell you that we all wear similar shoes here and some journeys are longer than others, keep your chin up and don't settle for anything less than what you want.

hmmohrma-Stuck says everything I was going to say. She's got a great way with words.

PrincessPearl-It sounds very much like you would fit in here. It's sad that you had to find us here but the ladies here are amazingly supportive. Many of them have graduated to the PARL thread over in Pregnancy After a Loss but they pop in occasionally to check in. I bounce back and forth myself because I've had 3 rainbow babies despite my continued RMC problems.

 

[Creolequeen81]

Hi ladies I haven't posted in a while. I'm still recovering from my last loss in Sep/Oct being diagnosed with postpartum depression has been tough but the Prozac and the support of forums like this have helped me a great deal. It makes me feel much better knowing that I'm not alone and that there are ladies that have some of the same struggles as me. Yes it still hurts that I don't have a baby of my own yet but I know my time will come. It's coming up on the due date of my mc from earlier this year and I'm not sure how I'm going to handle it.

 

[hmmohrma]

Creole, it is so nice to have these forums to feel less alone. I'm sorry you're coming up in that date. Hopefully we will both join the PARL pages at some point, too.

 

[Creolequeen81]

Thank you hmm! I praying that I can join the PARL pages. Right now I'm focused on getting my mental health back in order. As everyone in this forum knows it's hard preparing for a baby and then having that joy ripped from you for known/unknown reasons. I'm just praying that I can get through the next few weeks.