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.