Seventy Percent

I received a "C" in civil procedure my first semester in law school. I was devastated. A "C". A rotten stinkin' "C". I cried. I wailed. I met with the professor. I couldn't believe it was happening. I seriously thought about dropping out of law school.

After four miscarriages, statistically, there is still a seventy percent chance of conceiving a healthy pregnancy even without any medical intervention. Whether or not I will fall on the good side of this statistic only time will tell. For now, I'm taking that "C" grade and running.

The Husband and I met with Dr. Wonderful this week. His first comment was something along the lines of:

"Well, I'm sure you want to know what happened. What you had is generally referred to as a chemical pregnancy. A chemical pregnancy is . . ."

The husband almost throttled him, "The woman KNOWS what a chemical pregnancy is - you've never seen a quick draw Dr. Google like this one over here in your life."

Except for the MTHFR, all tests have been negative. And my particular gene mutation (MTHFR A1298C) is more rare (read super special!) and therefore less is known about it and its possible effects on miscarriage. He was treating it the same as he does with his MTHFR C677T patients - extra folic acid. Heparin? Baby aspirin? I've been taking baby aspirin on my own since January. He doesn't use heparin or baby aspirin in his practice. His thoughts about MTHFR is that the problem is the absorption of the folic acid and that an anticoagulant does not address the problem. Of course I've read plenty of blogs out there where heparin is added to the mix and bingo! real live baby.

Running? I asked if running could have posed any risk. I asked this primarily because it is something that I can control, not because I want to blame myself (although that is perhaps inevitable). I ran a much greater distance than normal very early on in the pregnancy. He indicated that it COULD have caused problems but we'll never know. Dr. Wonderful said that he's loathe to recommend someone not exercise considering how many patients he's trying to get TO exercise but I can try walking next time and see what happens.

The plan? He recommends Clomid. Four cycles. Unfortunately I've read A Few Good Eggs which outlines the horror that is Clomid. Moody? Check. Fat? Check. Completely around the bend psycho? Check. Needless to say, I'm not exactly looking forward to it. His theory is that 1) if I have an ovulation problem that has gone undetected this can help and 2) the more eggs out there the more chances I have of a successful pregnancy.

If that proves unsuccessful we can move on to injectibles with IUI or without (he used the term, "relations" - as in we can have "relations" on injectibles versus an IUI - he really did).

If no dice there? We can move onto IVF with PGD. He explained the inherent problems with PGD in my case and that it's not exactly a perfect system. He also discussed a patient who just went through her second IVF with PGD - both times ALL of the embryos had problems. In that case, he said, the jig is up - it's time to move on.

His thoughts are that the recurrent miscarriages are likely due to "genetic problems" despite the fact that no chromosomal abnormalities were found in the husband, myself or the one embryo that was tested back in September. Further, he seems to believe that it's like the lottery, the more tickets you buy, i.e., pregnancies you conceive, the better chances you have of winning.

Wonderful.

My biggest fear was to walk in and hear, "Donor eggs." I can't tell you how many blogs I scoured subsequent to this latest miscarriage and read of donor eggs. Adoption. Living childless. It scared the absolute daylights out of me. Then a few days later I found several blogs of women who had had multiple miscarriages and are now about to give birth. No explanation. No found causes for all those losses. Many with little or no medical intervention. They just had to endure sometimes five, sometimes more than ten, miscarriages. Dr. Wonderful indicated that a lot of this has to do with patience--some people become "impatient" and need to move on to medical intervention even though with time it could and the chances are likely, that it will happen naturally. I'm not sure I would characterize not wanting to go through any more miscarriages as "impatience" but hey, what do I know?

Clomid, here I come.


P.S. Thank you all so much for all your comments. We haven't told many people about this latest miscarriage and the kind thoughts from all of you was incredibly helpful and made us feel a little less alone.