After our first miscarriage in September 2014, I was eager to start trying again. I rushed through the grieving process and tried to ignore what had happened. My OB said that we needed to wait three full cycles before we starting trying to conceive – I needed to give my body time to heal after the D&C. She also recommended that I take baby aspirin everyday. So we waited exactly three months and then began tracking my cycle. Fortunately, we got pregnant on the first try; I was shocked and excited when I saw the positive pregnancy test! But our excitement was brief. I got blood drawn to confirm the pregnancy at 6 weeks and our numbers were extremely low. My HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin or the pregnancy hormone) was a 10 and my progesterone level was .5 . For those of you who have never had these blood tests done before, those numbers are stupid low, and they can indicate a chemical pregnancy. And that’s what my OB said happened. I had a sonogram to confirm the loss. Nothing was there. The tiny cells that would have made a baby were gone. Our second miscarriage.
I was really sad and disappointed from this loss. It was so fleeting that my brief excitement was overcome with sadness almost immediately. I felt stupid for trying again so quickly and for being sad with such an early loss. I started wanting answers, and so did my OB. We did a full panel of blood tests in late January 2015. I filled vials and vials of blood, and all of the results came back normal. There was nothing wrong. And though that was a relief, it was also frustrating. We still had no answers to why I couldn’t successfully carry a pregnancy. We knew nothing was wrong, and I was thankful for the good health report. The answered questions still remained, but we pressed on. We decided to give it some time.
Our first due date came and went, fairly unnoticed. We were on vacation for my husband’s birthday and I kept thinking about how eager I was to try again that spring. I was always looking forward to the next opportunity to try again; I was rarely present. I wanted that baby that we lost. We began tracking my cycle again in the spring and by September 2015, we were pregnant!
I felt like this time something would be different. I began getting blood drawn every other day to make sure my HCG and progesterone levels were increasing by at least 60% every two days. The first blood draw came back with promising numbers: HCG was 1,606 but progesterone was only 2.7. My OB prescribed progesterone supplements to help increase those results. A weekend went by and my next blood test revealed that this pregnancy was set to fail, again. My HCG was 500 and progesterone was 16.2, but only because of the supplement I was taking. Since the pregnancy didn’t get to a high enough HCG, I never had a sonogram until after the loss. Those low numbers were delivered on a Monday, and by Friday, the embryo had made its way out.
I let this miscarriage happen naturally, and oh man, that was a lot of blood accompanied by a lot of pain. When you have a natural loss, you can’t use tampons and so I basically wore adult diapers all weekend. I remember that my cousins were in town and we went to a beer festival my husband was in. I smiled, drank, and laughed. And then every 20-30 minutes, I had to go to the bathroom because I was bleeding so bad. I sat at the beer festival in the bathroom, crying and bleeding. But when I came out of the stall, I was smiling. I didn’t want to share what was really happening. I just wanted it to be over. Our third miscarriage.
Once we had our third miscarriage, our OB said that we had “recurrent miscarriages”, and she referred us to a reproductive specialist. My husband and I met a great infertility specialist at KU Med and got more tests done in January 2016. We both underwent an extensive chromosome test, with the results coming back normal. I had a saline sonogram to see if there were any structural issues causing the losses, and the results were normal. In late February I had an endometrial biopsy to scrape pieces of the uterine lining and test that for abnormalities. Up until this point, the tests had been fairly painless, with the saline sonogram being slightly uncomfortable. But this biopsy was extremely painful. The kind nurse practitioner inserted her instrument and couldn’t find what she was looking for for a few minutes. Once she did and she began scraping, a sharp and intense stabbing took over my body and small tears slid down my cheeks. It was over in 15 seconds, but I needed to just lay there for a few minutes to recover. I had taken Advil prior to the biopsy, as prescribed by the doctor, and then I went home to lay down. I had intense cramps the rest of the day. And after all of that, the results came back normal. Still nothing wrong.
Our new doctor encouraged us to try again using progesterone supplements to help thicken my lining in the hopes that it would help a pregnancy stick. This time around, I took progesterone twice a day, and absolutely hated it. The side effects mirrored pregnancy symptoms and your period wouldn’t start until you stopped taking the progesterone after a negative pregnancy test. We had multiple negative tests and I decided that I didn’t want to continue this method anymore. It was screwing with my mind, always making me second guess any nausea, any swollen breasts, any mood swings. It convinced me we were pregnant every month when I wouldn’t get my period on time. And that mind-fuck was too much for me. I stopped taking progesterone and we kept trying to conceive. An by late August 2016, we were pregnant! Our first blood tests were around 6 weeks and the HCG was 64 and progesterone was 8.7. I was so worried. I knew those numbers were low. On the phone, the nurse who gave me the results told me that the good news was that I was pregnant and we would just need to wait to see what the next tests would show. I was so upset by these low numbers that I had to leave work and went to lay in my bed, crying all afternoon.
The next blood tests confirmed an upcoming miscarriage. My HCG was only 65 and progesterone was 13.6, only because I was taking a supplement again. Two days later, my blood tests came back lower and lower – HCG was 40 and progesterone was 7.4. At that point I was just waiting for the embryo to pass. A few days later, it was gone. My final blood test confirmed the loss with my HCG at 0. I went to work, smiled, and told only my boss and my cousin. I was so upset, I cried everyday on the way to work and everyday on the way home. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed and had to stay home from work because I was so sad. Our fourth miscarriage.
Reflecting back on these three losses, it’s hard to remember all the tests and numbers and doctor’s visits super clearly. I only know the blood results so clearly because I began writing down all of the test dates and results. I hadn’t documented anything from the first miscarriage, which I regretted, so I began to keep track of the HCG and progesterone levels in hopes it would provide some answers. The time between our first and fourth losses was a challenging time for me. I tried to fill the void of our miscarriages with hobbies and commitments and work and books and running. But really I was always waiting for the next opportunity to try again. I wish I would have been more present and faced my losses more intentionally.
I did discover how strong I was, how to develop resiliency, how to ask for help. I never let our losses describe or dictate who I was, and some days that was helpful, and other days it wasn’t. But through it all, I knew I had to keep going and to press on. I believe I’m meant to be a mom, and I know I am strong. That gives me hope to press forward.
Pressing On 