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!

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.

i got my BFP!! I´m over the moon!!!

I have some terrific news: i got my BFP!! I´m over the moon!!!

I know i haven´t posted much since i started this blog, but i have been so down the last months and needed to stay away from it. Now i intend to post all the knowledge i have gained the last 5 months since my miscarriage. I have done a lot of research, gone to many medical appointments, try acupuncture, ovulation tests and vitamins. I will tell you my experience in the following posts. Please, feel free to ask about anything you want to know and i´ll try to provide some answers based on my experience.

Actually, yesterday (at 10 dpo) i got a very faint line using the One Step Pregnancy Test. These are the cheapest tests i could find on Amazon. You can see in the picture how the tests look. However, i think it is hard to see the positive lines at 10 and 11 dpo, but believe they are there! On the water control and the 9 dpo tests there was absolutely nothing. The 11 dpo one is a bit darker than the 10 dpo. Just to make sure, i tested today with a ClearBlue Digital, which showed that i´m pregnant and conceived 1-2 weeks ago.

Well, I wanted to post this so you can know what to expect when testing with these cheap tests, the  faintest line is a positive! :) However, as you might know, testing this early has the drawback that you might have a very early miscarriage you wouldn´t have known about hadn´t you tested. Anyway, i prefer to end the 2 week-wait as soon as possible :)

Good luck to all!

Missed miscarriage

I´m Mai. Two months ago I suffered a missed miscarriage at 9 weeks pregnant. Since then, I don´t remember a single day in which I haven´t felt depressed, or anxious, or afraid, or guilty, or a combination of those feelings.

We had seen the heartbeat of our baby at week 6, and were feeling everything would be ok. Only do I realize now how absolutely happy I was back then.

One afternoon at week 9 I noticed a minimal blood stain in my underwear. I called the doctor who reassured me that this was normal, nothing to worry about. Two days later I noticed a bit more spotting and decided to get an ultrasound at a private clinic. The person making the scan remained silent for what seemed an eternity. In the first ultrasound the heartbeat was obvious, but this time it was clear there was no heartbeat. I don´t even have words to express what I felt then. My heart broke.

As I had no signs of major bleeding, I was given the choice between having a D&C or taking pills to expel the embryo. I opted for the pills (Cytotec), as I thought it would be less invasive. The doctor recommended taking them next day first thing in the morning. However I took the pills that day before going to bed. It may be weird, but I couldn´t bear to have my dead embryo inside me any longer after I knew. I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. It was an awful night. The pills made their job, but it was a very painful -both physical and emotionally- process. After that I kept bleeding for a week.

Despite the infinite sadness, I felt optimistic about getting pregnant again. Previously I got pregnant the first month we tried. We did not do anything except having sex during the middle days of my cycle. I thought I´d be pregnant that very same month or, being pessimistic, the next cycle. That has proven not to be the case.

To increase my chances of getting a BFP, I bought digital ovulation tests (Clearblue), I didn´t stop taking prenatal vitamins, and in addition I asked my husband to take folic acid and zinc to help his swimmers. In just some months, getting pregnant has passed from being something fun, to be something scientific J

Today I got AF (Aunt Flo). This means I am starting my third cycle after the abortion, and still no baby on the way. I feel so disappointed and sad, and sometimes feel like there something wrong with me and I will never be able to get a BFP again. I´ve heard that after miscarriage you are even more fertile that before, and that makes me feel even more miserable.

Well, probably I will feel better in a couple of days, as I´ll get my hopes up for this cycle. I´m planning getting even more scientific! J Apart from using the OPK (Ovulation Predictor Kit), I´ll start charting my temperatures. And I asked my husband to take selenium on top of everything else… I even recognize to myself that I am getting a bit crazy about this…

If you made it till here, thanks for reading my craziness J I´ll keep you updated. I am very sorry if any of you have experienced a miscarriage too. If you did, how long after the loss did you get your BFP? I could use a bit of hope today J