This blog is written by a 28-year-old that has suffered 2 miscarriages, and that wants to share her feelings and experience with other women going through the same heart-break. The blog is written in English so it can help as many women as possible. However, you are welcome to write your comments and questions in Spanish and Italian as well.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Recovering from second loss

So finally i discovered that my HCG levels had dropped from 50 to 10 in 4 days. I was not bleeding at all, i suspect because i was on progesterone. I stopped the progesterone and started bleeding after 2 days. My second miscarriage in 5 months.

I have been feeling awful again, not as bad as the first time though. Well, not really sure about that... It felt different. After the first miscarriage i felt that it was my fault. I work in a laboratory and one day I had been working with organic compounds without a real proper protection during the 2 weeks before i got my bfp. Well, maybe i will get to that in another post... This time around, i took really good care of myself. So now i´m worried that there is something wrong with me, or less likely, with my husband (he is a sperm donor, so we assume his sperm is very good quality). Ironically, i also donated my eggs three times when i was between 18 and 20 years old. I always thought i would be one of those women that go on to have children with no problem...

I am so afraid that i will never have children of my own. Don´t get me wrong, i think adoption is a fantastic choice and i always thought i would like to adopt some day (even before knowing my fertility issues). However, i ache so much to have a full-term pregnancy, and to have a baby that will be half my husband/half myself. If someone had told me these things before my miscarriages (mcs) i would have thought that they were a mixture of selfishness, stupidity and ignorance. A child is always a child, and biological children are not exactly a mixture of dad and mom. However, my view has radically changed these last few months, as you see.

Well, enough with the self-pity. To make a long story short, i have done everything in my power to get proper testing for recurrent mcs. I live in Copenhagen (Denmark) and i have been told that i get no testing until the 3rd mc. Also, knowing that the health system here is awful, i don´t think the testing would be very exhaustive either. In Denmark, you cannot even go to private doctors when it comes to pregnancy-related issues. I know it is hard to believe but it´s true. The state controls every pregnancy, and the state tells you what should you do during pregnancy or after your mc, and you have no right to have a different opinion. CRAZY! And so claustrophobic! I feel like George Orwell could have been inspired by this country when writing 1984. Well, fortunately I am not danish, so i can travel to my home country and get proper testing. I come from poor and troubled Spain. The same Spain i had to escape from to have a job in science. However (even if the current government is so very keen in destroying it) the health system is still awesome (especially if i compare it to the danish one). And if you don´t agree with the public-system doctors, you can always go to private ones.

So i spent all last week in Spain checking with different doctors and testing me and my husband. I am waiting for the results, when i get them i will post all the stuff they checked for. I hope this will help someone. I found myself spending so much time looking for what i should test, and it´s not always that easy to find reliable and complete info on the Internet.

My advise to women in the same situation is to seek medical testing after 2 mc in a row (1 mc is really very common). Many doctors and health systems will try to convince you that is so normal to have 2 mcs, but it is not, especially if you and your partner are young and healthy. If we assume that every pregnancy has a 20% probability to end in a mc, the probability of having 2 consecutive mc is 4% (0.20x0.20x100=4%). So when you are told that you don´t need testing, they are not thinking about your well being or about improving your chances of being a mom, they are plainly thinking about how much your testing will cost.

Sorry for the long and complaining post... I´ll be back with the list of tests i had last week.

Luck and hope to all of us!

Friday, August 2, 2013

Losing hope again...

I´m so down today. I´m currently on day 19 dpo, and i have made pregnancy tests almost every day since i first got my bfp. They haven't got any darker, in fact, i even see them lighter. My doctor made a blood sample on 14 dpo, and my HCG was 50. It is on the low range, but still normal. She took another sample today, at 19 dpo, but i won´t know the results until next week. I´m pretty pessimistic since my test look ligther as days pass. Also no symptoms at all. 

I´m taking 400 mg of progesterone per day, 200 mg twice a day. I´m afraid the progesterone is only going to delay my miscarriage.




I thought after one miscarriage i had good options to go and have a baby in the second try... I still have some hope, but my brain is really telling me that this is not going to finish well.