After 3 MC Testing Normal - No Answers For Me

amanda21911 · 10-25-2008, 05:07 PM

I'm looking for advice. Yesterday we went to the doctors to get the results of the testing they did after our 3'rd loss. Unfortunately the RE said he had no answers for us - the testing came back normal. I immediately began to cry as I feel I don't know where to go from here. Of course I'm not ready to give up but my dream of having children is quickly slipping from my fingers. I am having surgery next week for them to "explore" my uterus because of my history of endometriosis and polyps so if there is anything to remove they will. Other than that the RE had nothing else to recommend except to possible quit my stressful job to work on myself physically, mentally and emotionally but in today's world money is tight. If any of you are in the same situation what have your RE's reccommended and what is the next step for you? I read another post that helped - it made me feel not so alone. I just wanted to see if any one else is going through the same thing?

JustinsMama · 10-25-2008, 07:09 PM

I'm so sorry for your losses. I started seeing an RE after 2 miscarriages and I checked out fine for everything as well, except that my uterus appeared a bit oddly shaped on the HSG scan. He recommended laproscopy/hysteroscopy surgery to go in and examine further and remove any problems he found. Turns out I had stage 2 endometriosis, scar tissue, fibroids, and a large cyst on my ovary, all were removed during the surgery. My RE was really happy we decided to do the surgery and suspects this was my problem. So I know how hard it is, but try and keep your chin up. Your doc may find uterine problems to be the cause once he does your surgery as well, especially if you have a previous history of this. Good luck to you, I hope you get some answers soon.

amanda21911 · 10-25-2008, 07:55 PM

Stacy
Thank you so much for your reply. Keeping my chin up seems to be the hardest thing to do so thank you for your encouragement. Whats next for you? This will be my 3rd hysteroscopy and I'm actually hoping they find something so we can get some sort of answers. Good luck to you too - getting encouragement from women like yourself means so much to me so thank you.

RunnerDuck · 10-26-2008, 02:06 PM

I had 3 losses in between my son and my girls. 1 blighted ovum, 1 chemical, and 1 that started as twins with crappy numbers - 1 baby never even got a heartbeat, the other had no heartbeat at 6w and some days but had a flicker at 7w and some... but a few days later I started bleeding and went in for a scan and it had died.

I can't remember if I had testing done after the 2nd or the 3rd mc... but it was testing on me, not the "products of conception" as it was so early. So we don't know if there were any obvious problems with them and the stuff on me came back iffy. I think it was after the 2nd that we tested. I did test as having 2 copies of MTHFR but my homocysteine levels were normal and the HC is supposedly what really causes the problems. I had a very slight elevation in one of the antiphospholipids - something like a cutoff of 9 and mine was 10, I am talking VERY slight... So I started taking a B complex by prescription and we added prednisone at a low dose (10mg a day) which is supposed to help and a baby aspirin a day... low-key stuff based on pretty low-key findings...

I had my son totally unplanned and totally problem free so from my thinking, deluded or otherwise, I couldn't quite believe that my body was the problem... I was convinced I was putting out lousy eggs and they never had a chance to begin with. I mean maybe my lousy body was making lousy eggs but I felt like if we could just get a good egg - we'd have some success. Does that make sense?

I did 3 cycles of clomid with no response at all. Clearly not the drug for me. We moved on to injectables - bravelle, which is all FSH which is supposed to be good for PCOS. I made TONS of eggs and DH's sperm was more than adequate (the counts were iffy but there were tons of swimmers left after washing for IUI so he wasn't the problem). Despite that - I had several totally failed cycles, 1 chemical preg., and the twin pregnancy that never really got off the ground. That last one, I took femara... then switched to a bravelle/menopur combo ... and while it resulted in the miscarriage from hell - it dragged on and on - to me it was like the closest we'd come to success. So the next cycle we did just menopur and I got pregnant with triplets which my doctors were, shall we say, not supportive of. And after 3 losses and so many failed cycles (combined with lots of bleeding early in the triplet pregnancy) I was terrified to go against their advice and I reduced to twins.

So in the end, after 3 mc and many failed cycles ... I got twins. I am convinced the right drugs make the right egg quality.

Depending on what meds you have used - a different stimming protocol may help. Just my opionion, of course. Personally I'd worry that you are using the same eggs from the same cycle and having 2 losses back to back.

The problem could come from the stim drugs.

Don't know if that helps at all - but I did have 3 losses and I did have success in the end, although my success came with its own price and its own bitter pill to swallow.

ladaisy · 10-26-2008, 08:49 PM

amanda - I am so sorry for your losses. I really do understand as I am going through my second loss right now (d&c on Wednesday).

What type of tests did you have done at your RE? Did you ever have chromosome testing done on the tissue from your babies? I am planning to make and appointment with my RE to see if he thinks me and DH should do testing. I have no idea what kind of tests they do but I will let you know when I find out. The only tests that I have had done on myself are the HSG and SHG to make sure tubes are open and that there was no problems with my uterus and everything came back normal. DH has semen analysis and everything was normal for him as well.

I am sorry I can't be of more help. I just wanted to let you know that you are definitely not alone.

JustinsMama · 10-27-2008, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by amanda21911

Stacy
Thank you so much for your reply. Keeping my chin up seems to be the hardest thing to do so thank you for your encouragement. Whats next for you? This will be my 3rd hysteroscopy and I'm actually hoping they find something so we can get some sort of answers. Good luck to you too - getting encouragement from women like yourself means so much to me so thank you.

Hi Amanda,
Now that I've had my surgery, the next step for me is to try again and hope things go better this time. My RE said if I'm not pregnant in 3 months he will give me something to speed up the process. (Clomid I assume?) My RE also has me taking baby aspirin now as I guess that can help prevent MC. Has your doc ever mentioned that to you? Doc said I'm now ready to try next cycle, except that now AF hasn't shown up (she is a week late) so I'm getting really frustrated! I'm not sure if maybe the surgery has thrown my cycle off? If she doesn't show up soon I'm going to call my doc and see if they can give me something to induce AF. Good luck to you, I hope you get some answers and your next pregnancy is a sticky one!
Stacy

andrea38 · 10-27-2008, 12:18 PM

Amanda - I am sorry for your losses and even more sorry that you cannot find a reason why. However you should know that they cannot test for everything on the POC. My 1 year old daughter passed away earlier this year from a mitochondrial disease. With the disease she had, most babies result in miscarriages or never make it past a month of age. This is definitely not something they would test for in fact it took us 9 months to even figure out what she had. So unfortunately they just cannot test for everything.
I hope you can recover from your losses and hopefully go on to have a healthy beautiful child.

amanda21911 · 10-27-2008, 09:37 PM

RunnerDuck - Thank you so much for sharing your story. Congratulations! Everything you said about the meds determining egg quality makes complete sense. It actually never occurred to me that we are continuing to use frozen eggs from the same IVF cycle. My RE keeps saying that since im young (27) that my eggs are probably good quality but how can he know? Once these embryos are done we are freaking out about having to pay to go through IVF all over again (we dont have insurance coverage) but it may help us in this struggle to have a baby to get a new "batch" of eggs. Thank you again so much for your story - it gives me real hope!

Ladaisy - The tests I had done were the recurrent pregnancy loss panel - but from what I've read online most RE's do a simple panel of tests and not all the tests that an RI would do. I dont believe that I've had the chromosome testing done. I had a D&C with my first (last year) and thought they tested the chromosomes because the next day I got a phonecall from the lab telling me that tests were done and the fetus was normal. So I took that as the chromosomes were normal but my RE just told me last week that no they did not test for chromosomes they just tested the tissue???? I have no clue what that means - I was very confused. Thanks again for sharing your story and I wish you the best of luck. It means so much to know that we are not alone in this. Its hard for family/friends even husbands to understand what we are going through and it can feel very lonely. Thanks again!

Stacy - I'm so glad you mentioned about taking a baby aspirin. My RE's orginal thought was that I had a blood clotting disorder because of when I was losing but the tests came back normal. I was wondering if it would hurt me to take a baby aspirin a day anyway? Seeing that your RE but you on this - this is something I am going to bring up in my appointment tommorrow before my surgery. Thanks so much for the info and support! Good luck to you too!

Andrea - I am so sorry for your loss. I just cant even begin to imagine what your family has gone through. Your right unfortunately they cannot test for everything even though I wish they could - it would save us all alot of heartache. Thanks for your words of wisdom and I wish the best for your family. Thank you for sharing your story!

RunnerDuck · 10-28-2008, 01:02 PM

What are the details of your first mc? I only see the two chemical pregnancies listed in your siggie. Is there a 3rd not mentioned or are your counting the ectopic as a mc? An ectopic is not necc. a mc IMO since even though the pregnancy ended it might have been just fine had the baby implanted where it was supposed to. So if you're counting that as a mc - I'd say not to since it's just going to get you down and make you feel like things are failing more than they are. Sorry if I am missing something obvious.

As for testing the fetus - most likely they just tested that is was an actual embryo and not something like a molar pregnancy or something else obviously wrong, esp. if you got the results back so soon. We had to have genetic testing on one of my girls and were told the results could take up to 2 months - but in my research it takes much less for, say, women undergoing amnio - but still I think the shortest turn around I saw to find out anything genetic was 2 days. Or was it a week? Definately not ovrernight - so I'd assume you did not have genetic testing done and it was more of a general "does it look normal?" thing.

As for the RE vs. RI - after all my failed cycles I did have an appt. to meet with an RI because they do look at a lot more than an RE... there is, I think, only one lab in the US that does all the detailed crazy testing they order - it's in Chicago, and all the RIs mail the tests to this crazy lab... I would have had to pay out of pocket a LOT to see this guy and have the testing... and in the end I cancelled. My gut just told me, that was not my problem. I don't know if my gut was right or if it just didn't want to spend the money... but I did look into it. There is a BIG guy near me, Beers or Beer - he died but his practice lives on - he wrote this "Is your body baby friendly?" book... I don't know. A lot of what I read pointed to this whole RI thing not being proven, Beers results not being reproducable, some of his treatments resulting in MORE mc... I felt like a ha, here is ANOTHER way to freak us out and get us to pay MORE MONEY by preying on our desire for children... There may be some cases where it's warrented but I don't know, to me it had an air of quack science and I wasn't quite ready to travel that road yet.

If you can find it I highly reccomend a book called "Coming to Term" about miscarriage, reasons for it, and how likely you are to conceive and succeed even with multiple MC. I's written by a man whose wife had many mc. Very informative and helpful.

Made me suspect the immune line of thinking...

Actually also spoke with a women who had been to this Beers and knew other women who had gone and she said every one seems to get the same DX and TX which makes me really wonder...

Ummm, final point - I mentioned baby aspirin, too - it is supposed to help with implantation... likely will not hurt... be be aware that aspirin has been linked to ovulation problems - you will make an egg but the follicle won't rupture so it won't be released... this is at higher doses than one baby aspirin a day, though. And with IVF it's a moot point. But I found when taking the chewable baby aspirin they were so tasty I wanted to eat more than I should have... so to me it was helpful to take the ones you just swallow instead.