my Self

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Fort St John, BC, Canada
My husband, David, and I had been trying to have a baby since November of 2007. After 'letting things happen', we got the amazing news that we were pregnant in June of 2008. Sadly, that pregnancy ended at 9 weeks with a natural miscarriage. After two more chemical pregnancies, we turned to fertility treatments in 2009. That decision was a disaster, with lousy medical care and poor monitoring. In December of 2009, we made the huge decision to move onto IVF. Things fell into place like magic and we began treatment on January 15, 2010. After a blighted ovum in March, we did a successful FET in June, only to endure another blighted ovum in July. We kept up and underwent another IVF in September/October of 2010 with the arrival of our son, Brogan in July of 2011! After our lovely success (finally) we decided to undertake yet another IVF treatment and hope for a sibling for our little red headed boy. Well... so far it's worked. Our story continues below!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

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....





2 comments:

  1. Sonya. I'm so sorry that you had to go through this. The not knowing is very very difficult. Thank you for sharing this much needed inforamtion. I'm sure many women will benefit from your research.

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  2. Sonya. First, I'm so so sorry. Second, my first early loss (in December) was very similar to yours. I had a feeling that progesterone would be an issue, so I had it checked along with my first two betas. It was painfully low, yet the RE didn't recommend adding progesterone at that point.

    By the time I got my second BlindinglyFaintPositive in February, I had insisted on luteal phase support (prometrium). Even though that pregnancy ended even sooner than the first, I was so glad to know that I'd done everything I could to maintain the pregnancy. It was a little sad staying on the progesterone when the writing was on the wall, but like I said... so glad I insisted.

    Hoping that your next pregnancy is successful and sticks. And so so sorry that you've joined this sad club.

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