Recurrent Miscarriage Support Thread 15 - tests, treatment and trying again

[Justonemoretime]

Information, support, hand holding, tea, sympathy and a hell of a lot of combined knowledge - all welcome as we try to make sense of the RMC roller coaster of tests, NHS admin, heart ache and (hopefully) happy endings!
Please start with a recap of your stats :)

monten yes am waiting for karyotype results.

barking what a very rough time you have had. I think you're entitled to a rant about the iui situation. Infertility and RMC together has got to be Incredibly tough. The iui has worked before, so have everything crossed for you - it can work again x

girlie sending you hugs. I feel exactly the same.

flen meant to say yesterday, its good tbat your bloods are normal, but totally understand the mixed feelings about it. The stress issue is one that interests me hugely. No medical professional seems to mention it. But I have had 2 of the most stressful years of my life (RMC aside) and am convinced it has made my eggs more susceptible to damage.

barking - would it really be over if you don't get a bfp by the Summer? I will be crossing everything as tightly as possible that you do, but wouldn't there be other options still available? My best friend is going through IUI at the moment too (she is gay so needed donor sperm but also has PCOS and her first iui cycle seemed to end in a chemical pregnancy) and I have everything crossed for her too. She was told that after three failed cycles she could have a cycle of ivf on the nhs. Factor V is definitely one of the issues St Mary's check for as a definite cause of rmc so hopefully the heparin and aspirin is what you need to have a healthy pregnancy this time.

girlie - happy birthday to your ds. Please don't give up hope that you will be doing it all again soon. Have fun amongst the mayhem! Interesting about the PROMISE trial. I think you must be right. Annoying there's no answer yet.

It's a bit daunting thinking about jumping in after being quiet for a few days! I remember when Baking had to invite us back as it was so quiet on the thread, how things change...

Thanks for all the love yesterday. I had a real "what have I done?" feeling, and just cried buckets. Minnie was such a sweetie, she was a slink around in the shadows kind of cat and had a lovely presence. My home doesn't feel like a home without a cat in it. We will bury her today. Sleep has made everything feel a bit less bleak, and we have a quiet weekend planned.

Someone was asking about thin lining and early mc. I had both, and very light bleeding with no recognisable sac a few times. I had acupuncture (I agree about it's wonderfulness) and took some supplements to improve my lining before trying again, and it increased from 3mm to 7mm over a few months. That and going to Coventry (pompoms out!) seems to have done the trick...

Sorry to see new faces here, it is really hard to be going through another mc and not know what is going on and having no answers. I hope we can help.

Also sorry for the arrival of AF, particularly if you have long cycles. Mine are the other way, and averaged 26 days, so I can only imagine how it feels.

Barking good luck this cycle. Will keep the usual digits crossed for you lovely.

Baking, I start mat leave in a fortnight (!) and have a week before DS is with me F/T, so meeting up then would be lovely. Any other Bristolians around who want to join us??

I'm approaching 34 weeks and still as mad as a box of frogs, thinking things are bound to go wrong, and I have my consultant appt on Thursday to discuss the birth. It might convince me that it will happen, you never know...

Will try and keep up a bit more!

tanny more hugs, I know exactly what you mean about missing the cat presence - when ours died in Oct it was like the house was empty. Lots of extra Tanny care.

barking will you be able to try IVF or ICSI if the IUI doesn't work out? I don't blame you for switching jobs, it is so hard to go through what you are AND work, let alone teaching (I work in primary education so know how demanding it is!)

For those of you interested in the stress angle, the consultant connected it with stress causing a fight/flight response and the body understanding that now is not a safe time for a pregnancy. It's an interesting perspective and I know the body has its own ways, but I also come into contact through my work with women whose pregnancies continue despite substance misuse, domestic violence etc, so I'm not totally convinced! I also think that with mc2, I wasn't particularly stressed although with 3 I was more so, partly due to the terrible sickness. But then how do you not stress about a pregnancy when you've been through miscarriage?! The weekly scans are offered to try to counteract the stress of waiting for scans. In any case, I am going to have a good think about what else I can put in place to keep myself feeling good, and might consider talking to my GP about altered hours from my next BFP. One of the things I suffer quite badly with is insomnia, and that can be a massive stress.

PHEW! Sorry, big post. In the meantime, I am joining those of you TTC. Ovulation due today, so we are getting on it!

Glad some sleep had helped tanny. Losing a pet is so sad, as they are just another member of the family. That's exciting that you start mat leave soon. Woo hoo! Hopefully you can look forward to a stress free few weeks before the madness of a new arrival x

The rmc specifically mentioned stress to me both in terms of conceiving and miscarriage (as I had told them I have a pretty stressful job). They even suggested taking time off work the next time I got pregnant, which is easier said than done. That said, this time I had two weeks holiday over Christmas and still miscarried so not sure if it would really make any difference. I actually think I now find those early weeks of pregnancy, just waiting for the symptoms to fade, way more stressful than my job. When my symptoms faded this time I couldn't eat, sleep or concentrate on anything else. I feel pretty hopeless if stress really is affecting my pregnancies as I feel certain in any future ones that I'll be massively stressed out just by the fact that I'm pregnant. And knowing I shouldn't be stressed will just stress me out more.
Sorry for the rambling!

Good luck flen. I hope this is your month. I'm still waiting for ov day

Longest/Flen If this iui doesn't work we have one more iui and one round of ivf. Here we only get one round on the nhs, so we're lucky to get the iui (although the reason a lot of clinics don't offer it are the low success rates).
We'll pretty much be doing one treatment after the other if we're not successful each time, so all our options will be exhausted by summer unless we're delayed by another miscarriage in between. At that point we'll have been trying 3.5 years and we don't have lots of money to throw at private treatment. There's always the chance of a miracle, but if we haven't managed it naturally in all this time I've got to accept at some point it's unlikely to ever happen and try to move on.
So. Three chances left for a baby! No pressure!

Wow! Mat leave already Tanny! I'm sure it won't have done to you, but that seems to have flown by!! It is really happening! .
I think if we are lucky enough for this to happen, I'll be one of those who comes home from the hospital with baby and it doesn't have any clothes to wear or anywhere to sleep as I've not believed it was actually going to happen!

Thanks for the good lucks as well tanny and bootles .

sun that's exactly how I feel about the stress thing! I'm now going to be stressed about whether I'm too stressed!!! I started spotting last time whilst on a residential trip with 40 children and DH ended up driving out and picking me up so I could go to the hospital for a scan. Not exactly relaxing, but I don't think it was related.

The stress factor is really interesting. for my MCs I was is a school where the kids were, shall we say, a bit of a handful and I sometimes had to break up fights between strapping lads etc, never mind the ordinary stresses of actually teaching anyone anything! It literally used to give me night terrors because some classes were so awful. Now I'm in a lovely grammar school where the kids are an absolute pleasure to teach. His it made a difference to the outcome? I have found the scanxiety more physically nerve wracking than work. I even found doing my stand up comedy routine the other week less stressful than early scans! That said, I do believe that having cognitive hypnotherapy really did help untangle some of the mind/body stress triggers, so I was able to think 'this time is different' like a mantra. Or maybe it was just the heparin and progesterone combo? Who knows (and, at this point, if its working, who cares!!).
Barking, my swimming coach told me that he and his wife tried for 10 years, including several rounds of ivf, without success and the had a daughter naturally once they'd given up. I know the world is full of stories like that, but hopefully it will give you some hope.

Someone mentioned ages ago that teachers suffer more miscarriages then any other profession. Makes you think!

What's scary is the poor nurses in a&e; a recent report says that they suffer worse levels of stress than people working in war zone hospitals. That's terrifying.

I don't buy the stress thing - if it really has any influence on falling and staying pg, then I might as well give up now! Since my first mc, ttc and being pg have been extremely stressful, and it will stay like this until I have that elusive baby. There is simply nothing I can do about that
I hate that comment 'Relax, and it will all happen for you' comment - fortunately, only my mum has ever said that to me! It's patronising and ignorant, to say the least...

Moan aside, loving the support vibes on the thread! Do you realise that we will fill this before the month is over?! That will be 1000 posts in less than 31 days

The stress thing is interesting, isn't it? This pregnancy stuck, and I can't help reflecting that it was after I resigned from my hideous job. The trouble is that it was the MCs that made it hideous, iyswim, as it was all the bullying and bollocks with HR that finally forced me to resign.

All I know is that the break from TTC, not working and Coventry all seemed to contribute something.

Doesn't mean I wasn't still stressed though. My financial situation was dire and early part, as Just says, is so bloody stressful...

I think it can't hurt to try and reduce stress as part of the general health drive as stress can do funny things to your body but I am sceptical that it is the root cause of all our mcs. My job isn't particularly stressful. I am a lawyer so have the usual pressure and deadlines but I work for the government with a good work life balance, nice colleagues and no members of the public to deal with. I was on holiday during early pregnancy this time but with my in laws! Doesn't get much more stressful than that .

Didn't cat have a miracle bfp this time? But still, I will be banking on your iui sticking, Barking.

barking lots and lots of lucks, can't imagine what that must feel like.

just I work with the SEBD kids in primary, and find that pretty stressful, so heaven knows what it was like when they are massive! I will be interested to see how I feel about the scans next time round - it'll be my first time with regular scanning. Will I find it more stressful than the waiting?! DUNNO.

march when is it ov due? I will keep my fingers crossed for us both!

I agree with everyone about the impossible-not-to-be-stressed feeling. Basically I am going to be using the "minimise stress" argument as a reason for a) getting massages and b) making OH do everything. That is my plan. Pretty solid.

Loving the de-stress plan flen - will definitely be trying that one too

Flen that's definitely a plan! I've been practicing the second part with some success!

When I was concerned that my short periods might have meant thin womb lining I drank 3 cups of raspberry red leaf tea per day up until OV and a glass of pomegranate juice per day for my full cycle - it did give me heavier periods from the first month.

just I also know a girl who was adopted - her parents spent ten heard ttc unsuccessfully and also some IVF in there too. Once they adopted her and gave up trying they fell pregnant with her brother and sisters. My friends IVF consultant told her that in theory that it wasn't possible but he had met so many of his patients where this had happened to them that there is clearly some link.

Hope everyone is well today.

I wouldn't necessarily say that stress causes MCs, but there is evidence that your body can have strong stress reactions that don't help with fertility. I've heard that there was a study in cardiac patients' waiting rooms where all the chairs had wear in the same places (front of the seats and on the arms) because people were sitting forward in their seats and kneading the arms of the chairs. They were able to show a correlation between the 'stress' sitting behaviour and the restrictions of the arteries that led to cardiac problems. So your body can 'clench' when you're stressed. I have read that this can also happen to your falopian tubes, and make it harder for the egg to pass down the tubes. I think that there can be an element of self preservation there too, and the adrenaline response (like your body is saying 'why the hell would you put yourself though that again? I don't think so!')
Personally, I don't think its any coincidence that the 3rd and 4th times (i.e. this time) I've fallen pregnant it has coincided with being booked in for HSGs and other investigations to determine whether I had damage from previous ERPCs. I suspect that something deep in my subconscious relaxes because I'm 'being treated' rather than being told to 'keep on trying' with no 'hope' in sight.
Like many of you, I don't think its the root or single cause, but I think there's something in it, for sure.

Ourday I was looking at raspberry leaf tea and pom juice only yesterday. Is this worth doing? I know you only drink the tea until ovulation but can you buy easily in the supermarket?

I think I may try this as I'm slightly concerned about light periods and short cycles potentially making my lining thin

Brummie, you can usually get it in health food shops. I quite like it (obvs not at the moment, though!). I asked a UCLH consultant about drinking it once and he just shrugged and said 'if you like...' as if I'd asked whether I should wear my lucky socks during sex. But where do drugs come from if not from healing properties of plants? I say give it a go!

Hi brummie sorry if tmi - my periods were 3 days and only 1 of those days felt like real AF. The tea at first I could only find in a herbal shop - get the one made by clipper as it has more of the Raspnerry leaf than the holland and Barrett version. Eventually I found this tea in waitrose too. The pomegranite is the one called 'Pom'. After the first month I got a full 4 day AF and a 5 day one the following month. It was cheap and seemed to do the trick. I had the RL tea before work, 1 at work and one in the eve - they have me a headache if I tried to drink all of them at work. The Pom juice was very tart! So I got a large glass and had 3/4 Pom juice and topped up with sparkling soda water. 3 months after mc3 my cycles got shorter (from 35/36 days to 30) but my AF stayed as 5 days, despite not having the tea or juice since before mc3.
My consultant said light periods didn't mean a thin lining but I definitely saw a difference and I'm sure this with your accupuncture would be a good mix and it can't do any harm.

I'm a big fan of RLT for good uterine health. Clinical research is totally inconclusive but it is one of the few things that feels "right" to me.

I do also recommend maca root, which definitely helped me in the past to balance things after mc.

Ps the Pom juice I could only get from waitrose. The tea in waitrose was with the vitamins and not actually with the tea!