The backstory

Since I've jumped onto this whole blog idea ~8 months into our trying-to-have-a-baby adventure, I thought it might be a good idea to give a little bit of the background of what has happened to this point. I know many of my family and friends already know most of this, but here it is again anyway.

Pregnancy #1

We originally planned to start trying to conceive in April of 2012. We chose this date because it was just past the one-year mark after our wedding in March of 2011, and we didn't want to get pregnant in March because we preferred not to have a December baby (no offense to all of my amazing December-baby loved ones; there's just so much going on that time of year!). When January of 2012 rolled around, we decided to just give it a shot and see what happened in January and February. Lo and behold, we got pregnant that very first cycle, and saw our first positive pregnancy test on January 28th. The pregnancy was confirmed by my doctor, and at the beginning everything looked really good. My hCG numbers started off strong. We were over-the-moon excited, picturing ourselves with a cuddly little October baby, whom we started to refer to as "Ziggy."

Because I have a wonderful and very comprehensive doctor who is always willing to double check things if it will make me feel better, we were repeating hCG numbers weekly until the first ultrasound date. Well, the numbers didn't stay strong for long. They quickly went off-track, not doubling in the 24-72 hours that they're supposed to in early pregnancy. They were still increasing throughout February, but at a very slow rate.

On February 22nd, we went for our first sonogram. We would have had a sonogram at that point regardless of the circumstances, to confirm viability and to date the pregnancy. We were hopeful that we would get a pleasant surprise and see a healthy developing fetus, but instead we saw a 6-ish week pregnancy but no heartbeat. The radiologist told us that the prognosis was "guarded," that there should be a heartbeat by that point but sometimes they just show up late. We were told to come back in a week to check again. On February 29th, we were indeed back -- and this time the fetus was smaller, definitely had no heartbeat, and had a couple other signs of "embryonic demise." He conclusively told us that the baby had stopped developing and that we could expect a miscarriage. This medical phenomenon is referred to as a "missed miscarriage," because the woman discovers that the pregnancy has ended before any bleeding has occurred. Ziggy left us on March 2nd, 2012.

Pregnancy #2

After the first pregnancy, my doctor told us we needed to wait a cycle before we tried again, to give my body some time to recover. We ended up waiting two months (March and April) because I had a dentist appointment in early May and didn't want to be pregnant for that. We fully expected that the next pregnancy was going to be "the one" because having one miscarriage is pretty common. We were thrilled to see another positive pregnancy test on June 26th. Again, I skipped off to the doctor's office for a blood test, and because of what happened the first time, she wanted to repeat the hCG test just a couple days later to make sure everything was on track. The second blood was drawn on Friday, June 29th, and I should have gotten the results the following Monday, July 2nd. However, June 29th was the day of the huge "derecho" storm we had here in DC, which knocked out power to thousands of customers in the DC area for up to a week -- unfortunately including my doctor's office. So by the time her power came back on and her office re-opened after the Independence Day holiday, it was July 5th before I got my results. At that point I already knew that we were having another miscarriage, and that was over before the weekend ended. Though pregnancy #2 was definitely easier to deal with physically (since I wasn't as far along), it was also more difficult emotionally. I never imagined that it would happen again. I felt as though I had done my time in miscarriage-land and now I was on to the baby path. It was a huge crash to go from the elation of feeling truly and blissfully pregnant to learning that we were back on the other side of the starting line.

On the upside, my doctor said that because that pregnancy "never got off the ground," (it was actually what they refer to as a chemical pregnancy, where it doesn't develop enough for anything to be seen on a sonogram), we could try again right away. She was also willing to order some basic tests to try to get some insight about what was happening. Through that, we found out that I am positive for a compound heterozygous MTHFR mutation, as well as that the ANA was elevated. My OB referred us to a maternal-fetal medicine specialist for the MTHFR, and a rheumatologist for the ANA. The MFM wasn't much help, but did order some additional blood clotting tests and a karyotyping test that allowed us to rule out some other potential problems (you'll be happy to know that J is a "normal human male" and I am a "normal human female," at least chromosomally speaking). The rheumatologist basically said that the only autoimmune issue related to pregnancy loss is lupus, so she would test for lupus, but unless I had that, she couldn't really help us. Obviously, I don't have lupus, so that was a bit of a dead end (though some of the tests she ordered were helpful to Dr. Braverman and saved us some time).

Pregnancy #3

At this point I had a feeling that something out of the ordinary was going on. My mom and grandma both had miscarriages before their first successful pregnancies, but they never had another one -- so this didn't seem "normal" to me. Though we didn't expect it, we got our third positive pregnancy test on July 31st. It was confirmed by a blood test on August 1st, but again, the numbers were shaky so we tested again. The hCG was rising slowly, but it soon became clear that that pregnancy wouldn't continue either. By the time that happened, I honestly felt a little bit numb. I hadn't even let myself get excited about that pregnancy. Of course, we were sad, but we also felt like the third loss was our ticket to getting more help. In dealing with doctors, they generally see one early pregnancy loss as "normal," and two as a fluke. It isn't until you get to three that they will agree that something is going on and agree to investigate further. We are thankful that we have, to this point, been able to get pregnant relatively easily, and that we got to where we are in a matter of 8 months rather than a year and a half or two years. And we are hopeful that we can continue to get pregnant easily once Dr. Braverman fixes the issues that are inhibiting me from staying pregnant.

We are on hold right now in trying to get pregnant again, waiting for Dr. Braverman's tests to come back and for the medication dosing to start. We're hoping we'll get the green light by my October cycle.