3 miscarriages in a row. Please advise 😔

[Smaugli]

Hello Mumsnetters,

It says it in the title... Apparently DH and I are in the 1% of couples who had 3 miscarriages one after the other.

The first one happened in November - MMC at 8 weeks, surgical management. As told, we have waited full cycle to try again and were over the moon to see that positive line on the test. But I miscarried at 4+4 weeks and was really confused. Found out it was referred to as chemical pregnancy. We thought it was a fluke and tried again straight after, but now the same thing happened. 2 positive tests and then a negative and AF.

I cannot even explain the overwhelming sadness and emptiness I have atm, I can't wrap my head around all of this. When I had MMC in November, a nurse told me they don't test for underlying reasons unless the woman had 3 miscarriages in a row. I was shocked and couldn't even imagine what it must be like to go through something terrible like that 3 times in a row. And now here I am...

I guess I am looking for any other women who've been through this to share their story. What do they test for and how? How long does this whole process take? We obviously want to jump back into TTC asap and not waste time. I am 35 and was dreaming of giving birth this year, but of course I don't want to have the same thing happen again...

Hopefully we will get a GP appointment tomorrow, but I wanted to hear about your experience please. Maybe someone even just got pregnant for the 4th time and had a successful pregnancy and healthy baby without going through the tests?..

I am so lost 😔

I’m so sorry for your losses. I had 3 miscarriages in 14 months when I was 36-37. I was referred to the recurrent miscarriage clinic and after phoning them they gave me a cancellation, so I only had to wait 7 weeks from referral. There they took my medical history and tested blood initially. It turned out I had APS and was advised to start taking a daily aspirin immediately, and would need blood thinning injections throughout pregnancy. I was pregnant again a month after diagnosis, and rainbow baby arrived a day short of one year since my first appointment at the clinic. Throughout pregnancy I was under the clinic, received scans every 2 weeks in 1st trimester. Covid hit then which caused a bit of interruption but by the end of my pregnancy I was back having regular scans. I’ll be under the clinic for any future pregnancies. I’ll be trying for number 2 (soon, before I chicken out!).

Have hope xx

Hi @Smaugli I just read your post and wants to share my story/give you a few things to look into.

I too am in the 1% and have had 3 mc - Sept 2019, Nov 2019 and Nov 2020. I've had all the fertility checks/scans, my DH has had sperm analysis, and nothing was found, except my DH had low morphology but he managed to improve that by making some lifestyle changes/taking various supplements. I've also had some of the recurrent mc blood tests but not all.

I conceived again in the cycle after the mc is November 2020, and I'm currently just over 19 weeks pregnant - I have my 20 week scan on Thursday so hoping everything is ok then. I did lots of research into immune responses to pregnancy and NK cells. I'm not sure if you've heard of this , but it's basically where your body treats the pregnancy as foreign object and rejects it. There are tests available for these things, but it means you have to go private and they can be £££. For this pregnancy I took progesterone and a steroid called prednisolone for the first trimester, and a little into the second. The prednisolone is an immunity suppressant (not ideal in a pandemic!) and is supposed to help reduce your body treating the pregnancy as a foreign object. I didn't have any tests done, and I had to go private to get this medication prescribed. I don't even know if I need it, but something seems to have worked so far (all my losses were early) and I do believe it's the pred.

There's a couple of books I would recommend to you - 'it starts with the egg' by Rebecca fett, which has lots of useful info in about improving egg and sperm quality. There is also a special section for recurrent mc. Also 'is your body baby friendly' by dr beer, which goes into autoimmune responses to pregnancy and NK cells.

Have you been referred to the RMC? I had my referral in place after the 3rd loss, but I haven't had all the bloods done for that because I got pregnant again before my appointment.

I'm sorry you're in this position. It really is tough and it makes you impossible anxious for each pregnancy, which is not how it should be

There are some things they can test for which are easy to treat.
Underactive thyroid and blood clotting disorders are relatively common but diagnosed with a blood test and treated with drugs

Hopefully you won’t have to wait too long for a referral but stay on top of them and don’t get fobbed off

I’m so sorry . I had 3 mc in 2019 - 1 at 6w then 2 mmc and had an appointment booked for recurrent miscarriage in 2020 but it was cancelled due to cOvid. We were trying to work out whether to keep trying or stop and wait till I could get an appointment when I found myself pregnant again. This time I took 150 mg of aspirin every day from BFP and it was all ok. Whether it was luck/chance or the aspirin I’ll never know but I do think it’s worth a try. They recommend it for women with heightened risk of preeclampsia anyway.

There is always hope, even though it doesn’t feel that way.

I know how you are feeling. I had 3 MCs between two healthy pregnancies. It might all be okay naturally and you might need a hand, I’m sure you’ll get there either way.

I'm not sure if they refer you for chemicals or just miscarriages that make it past 6wk.
I've had lots of chemicals, unless you get early blood tests they can't confirm it as a pregnancy and are just taking your word for it. I only gave details of my mc's that passed 6wk to my midwife at my booking app.
Try not to lose hope, do ask your GP about testing but be prepared to have to fight for some help atm with 2 of your losses so early on. Good luck with it all and condolences on your losses.

I've had several chemicals and 2 mc's at 8 & 9wk since our last term pregnancy but now 18+5wk and baby is doing well.

I’m so sorry @Smaugli that you find yourself in this horrible situation, it’s truly heartbreaking.

I too have suffered several losses, 4 miscarriages in the last 12 months. It nearly broke me.

After the 3rd loss I was referred by my GP to a fertility specialist.

They did a variety of blood tests, some on day 3 of my cycle, then one on day 21 of my cycle which checked my progesterone levels. All tests came back perfect. Progesterone levels confirmed ovulation was occurring etc. But I knew getting pregnant wasn’t the issue, for me it was staying pregnant past 6 weeks.

I then had a scan on my womb and ovaries to check the condition, check for any cysts etc. Again all was good and I had a good follicle count on both sides.

My partner was sent for a semen analysis which again was perfect.

Because I have children from a previous relationship I was told that was as far as any help could go.

Not long after I’d been discharged from the specialist I fell pregnant. In the mean time I’d read lots about aspirin and how it can help prevent miscarriages. I felt wary about taking anything without the ok from a doctor so I didn’t take it. I miscarried again at 6 weeks.

I swore to myself next time I wouldn’t hesitate in trying the aspirin and realised after 4 losses I really had nothing more to lose.

The next cycle I started taking aspirin from 1dpo. Amazingly I got a bfp at 9dpo which was super strong and right from the off things just felt totally different. I just had a positive feeling. My tests progressed perfectly, I was doing the clearblue weeks tests which went up perfectly.
EPU scanned me at 5+4 due to my previous losses and to my amazement we saw a teeny baby with a heartbeat - something we had never got to see with any of the previous pregnancies.

I was in disbelief and subsequently had private scans at 6+2, 7 weeks, 8+4, 9+5, 10+3, 12+2 and most recently my nipt test and scan at 13+4. I’m due to have my nhs dating scan tomorrow at 14 weeks.

I’m still taking 150mg aspirin every day and totally credit this pregnancy to that. I informed my midwife at my booking appointment that I was taking it and she had no issues, but said she’d check with a consultant that they were happy with the dose etc.

She called me back later that day to say that yes, stick with 150mg a day as that is the updated nhs guideline amount. She said aspirin can do no harm but quite clearly can do some good. So I’m to stay on it until I tk my third trimester.

I was also prescribed cyclogest progesterone pessaries to use twice a day up until 16 weeks. I was given these by the EPU after my early visit to them at 5+4.

I’m only using 1 pessary a day now though as I never thought it was my progesterone levels that were the issue, but again they were given to me on a ‘they won’t hurt but might help’ basis.

At times I never really thought I’d have a successful pregnancy. I felt so close to giving up. But here I am. Not fully out of the woods as I’m awaiting our nipt results. But all indications from the detailed scan look promising.

I wish you so much luck for the future ❤️

Hi OP, I’m so sorry about your miscarriages.

I had 3 miscarriages before my daughter was born. I went for tests at a NHS recurrent miscarriage clinic. I think it took about 3 months to have all the tests and get results. None of the tests I had showed anything was wrong. So we just tried again with no changes or medical intervention and luckily our 4th pregnancy was successful.

You could look up the specialist NHS recurrent miscarriage clinics on the Tommy’s website. You can ask your GP to refer you to one of these if you want.

Wishing you all the best. I know it feels like a horrible limbo when you’ve had 3 mc and you don’t know what to do / what will happen next.

Thank you everyone, who has shared their stories. I really appreciate it! And I am really happy for those of you who had their rainbow babies and keeping everything crossed for you ladies who are currently pregnant!

You all are so strong! Women just keep on amazing me

Thank you for all your kind advice and recommendations, I noted them all down. I will see what the GP says tomorrow and will take it from there. One day at a time.

The only thing is I really hope it's not the clot problem because the only thing I am allergic to is .... Aspirin! How ironic...

@Smaugli if it is a blood clotting thing you can also have clexane injections (I have no idea if this is suitable if you're allergic to aspirin though). Best of luck to you

Sorry for your losses I had 4 consecutive miscarriages. GP ordered blood tests and referred me to the recurrent pregnancy loss clinic. They took bloods there too and did a scan, which was normal and bloods came back fine, but I was low on vitamin D. The consultant said vitamin D has a protective effect against miscarriage so he got me on a loading dose and said to come back to him as soon as I got another positive test for progesterone and extra scans. So there are things they will do even if they don't find a cause. Pleased to say it all worked and I'm 22 weeks pregnant now. Good luck OP, hope it works for you too.

I was referred to the recurring miscarriage clinic by the nurse at the EPU after my third surgical management of miscarriage (all missed miscarriages)
The process for referral didn’t take long but I think it can vary a great deal depending on location. Be prepared for them to not actually find a reason. One of the things they test is the tissue from the miscarriage (if they have it) and they never found anything from mine :(
Luckily for me I actually became pregnant soon after and had a successful pregnancy.

Like pp said, be prepared to potentially fight for referral. They didn’t consider chemical pregnancies as part of the requirements for referral in my case. I’m not minimising your experience, just setting your expectations. This can vary though, some areas might count them. My trust didn’t.

Thank you, for your advise and support ladies. It means so much to me

Spoke to my GP today and he said he will refer me to the recurrent miscarriage clinic, but it will take several months for them to get back to me because of the Covid backlog...

I don't know what to do, the idea of waiting several months for an appointment and then probably few more months for the tests to be done and for the results to come back, is making me light headed. The GP has suggested I could take the private route, but that will cost thousands...

And reading from some of you that they might not even find anything... But on the other hand I feel like I don't have it in me to go through this for the 4th time. So lost...

They can give you progesterone pessaries to use in the second half of your cycle and if you find out your pregnant you continue them until 12 weeks. Helped a close friend of mine sustain a pregnancy after reoccurent miscarriages.