What Happens Next: our follow up appointment after 3 miscarriages

So, on Wednesday, we went in for our follow up appointment after our most recent miscarriage. I think, both my husband and I, were feeling hopeful…that we would have some questions answered and have a sense of direction after the appointment.

Just as a bit of background, I have incredibly unbalanced hormones. I have low testosterone (which is being optimized with bio-identical pellets), I have low progesterone (which is also being optimized during my luteal phase), and my estradiol has been low. With our last pregnancy, we thought that if we could catch the pregnancy early enough, we could switch from oral progesterone to progesterone shots and hopefully with medical intervention, give the pregnancy the hormone support that it needed. But even though I was able to catch the pregnancy early (on day 21 of my cycle!), and I got the extra hormone support that I needed, we still lost the pregnancy.

And I think our appointment went really well. Our doctor is so kind, even though she can’t offer an explanation for why we had had these two recurrent miscarriages back to back. Perhaps it was chromosomal or perhaps there were other things at play that we don’t know about.

She did have a plan for investigating all the possibilities, so she had labs drawn for these things:

1. Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome – which is an autoimmune disorder which makes women at a higher risk for miscarriage.
2. Thyroid – Looking at the TSH and T4. My thyroid had been checked a year ago, but she wanted to make sure it was still in normal range.
3. Vitamin D levels – I am chronically vitamin D deficient, so I think this will come back to be low.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll go in to have my progesterone and estradiol levels check to see if my dosages need to be changed.

The MTHFR gene mutation is an obvious one to check, but since that lab test is so expensive, she is recommending that I take a pre-methylated folate.

Since the Antiphoslipid Antibody Syndrome test has to be done over the span of 12 weeks, we are going to take the time to focus on pre-conception health and then start trying again in the May timeframe.

I’m actually really looking forward to this breather…an opportunity to have some routine and get back to a schedule. I feel like our lives have been in emotional upheaval and chaos for three months, so I really need to re-anchor myself to some structure.

She also recommended doing an anti-inflammatory diet (basically Whole30, or Paleo) as well…so I am praying about to what extent I will be making eliminations in my diet.

In the end, I felt (and do still feel) encouraged. There is still a lot that we don’t know, and we have to wait for the labs to come back. So, we wait…and in the meanwhile, lean into healthy rhythms.