Okay, then..

Pregnant. Not Pregnant. For a woman who writes - A LOT - this blog has been pretty difficult to get my mind around. I avoided coming to my site because I would have to see my 'happy pregnant blog' and photos of my new baby.

However, it has to be faced. Like telling the few friends and family that I trusted with the early news. Like the photos of my beautiful positive pregnancy tests. Like the tests themselves. Like the stupid emails coming, with information about being 'five weeks pregnant... six weeks pregnant'. It has to be faced.

So here we go. For one thing I have to say that I handled it great. Like a champion! Threw out all the positive pregnancy tests. Facebooked a couple close friends, phoned the in-laws, ordered Boston Pizza (with cheesecake for desert), pulled my huge comforter off my bed and onto the couch, and ate cheesy, saucy, hot pasta with ice cold pepsi followed by caramel drenched cheesecake while watching a chick flick and cuddling with the cat. Could be worse I guess. There were a couple tears of frustration, but they were pretty much in private and I managed to spare my loved ones any more trauma than they had to endure.

So I am pretty pissed off at my doctor. He doesn't 'believe' in prescribing progesterone. Progesterone is what my body isn't doing properly. It's the hormone that is needed to build up the uterine lining (placenta). I am on Clomid, which does trigger the corpus luteum to blast out a healthy does of progesterone.... but that little bugger dies (the corpus luteum) about 14 days after ovulation and surprise, surprise, that's just about when I started to lose the baby.

I went in to see him and told him that I had done a ton of research. I told him that every fertility clinic I'd researched used Progesterone. I told him that I knew alot of women who were on the drug to help them get through the first 14 weeks. (The placenta takes over producing the hormone at that time). I told him I needed to know I was doing all I could do to save my babies' lives, regardless of how HE felt about it.

He told me to "show me something off the internet that proves progesterone prevents miscarriages", and I replied, "show me something in your medical journals that proves it doesn't". I did a lot of research tonight on this hormone and here is some information that came up on some very reputable websites:

Trials that show benefit to progesterone supplementation are few and far between. A Cochrane Review on the matter reviewed 14 trials and found no statistical evidence that using progesterone supplements reduced the miscarriage rates for women who had one miscarriage prior to the trial. Cochrane Reviews are generally felt by the medical community to be a fairly definitive word since they usually compile results from multiple prescreened trials in order to generate results of statistical significance.

But the same Cochrane Review also found evidence that progesterone supplements might help women with recurrent miscarriages, stating, "In a subgroup analysis of three trials involving women who had recurrent miscarriages (three or more consecutive miscarriages), progestogen treatment showed a statistically significant decrease in miscarriage rate compared to placebo or no treatment (OR 0.39, 95% CI 0.17 to 0.91)."


Anyhow. I got my progesterone supplements. Too late, of course. The baby had already died and my body was preparing to flush everything out as I was sitting there having the conversation with the doc. The same one I'd had THREE times before about this hormone.



I'll never know if this baby died because of natural chromosomal issues, or because I didn't get the progesterone in my system fast enough. I will NEVER know, but I will ALWAYS suspect.

Now back to the clomid and trying again....