Almost a month has passed since I had my third miscarriage. Brian and I met with Dr. Schmidt last Thursday (8/22). He was genuinely sad about my miscarriage. We spent about 20 minutes with him, and I heard his voice waiver a few times during our appointment. He is an amazing doctor. He makes me feel like I am his only patient, and I know that he truly cares about Brian and me. I have had three miscarriages with three different egg sources (the first miscarriage was my egg, the second was Heather's egg, and the third was our anonymous egg donor's egg). At this point, the common denominators in all three miscarriages are my uterus and Brian's sperm. I have been able to implant the embryo in my uterus and get pregnant, but with all three miscarriages, something goes wrong after implantation. We have 4 beautiful, high quality frozen embryos left over from our IVF cycle with our anonymous egg donor in July, and Dr. Schmidt said that he is absolutely determined to do whatever it takes to get me to carry a pregnancy to full term. He said that there are a number of blood clotting disorders and autoimmune issues that can cause recurrent miscarriages. He ordered a whole bunch of blood work to test for all of those possibilities. He warned me that the lab would be drawing "a lot" of blood. I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I found out last Friday ... more about that a little later. Dr. Schmidt said that he almost hopes that I will test positive for one of these issues because they are easy to fix. If I have a blood clotting disorder, I will have to give myself a once or twice daily heparin (Lovenox) injection in my abdomen before the frozen embryo transfer and throughout the pregnancy. If I have an autoimmune disorder, I will have to take prednisone (steroid) before the frozen embryo transfer and into the pregnancy. There is also another treatment for women with recurrent miscarriages ... it is an IV infusion of a substance called intralipids (made up of soybean oil and eggs). From what I've read, I would have to go to an infusion center once a month for a 90-minute IV infusion from before the frozen embryo transfer until the end of the pregnancy. With this treatment, there has been quite a bit of optimistic evidence of successful pregnancy in women who otherwise miscarried during the first trimester. Dr. Schmidt said that even if I don't test positive for any of these issues, he may still have me take the heparin injections, prednisone, and intralipid infusions. The other possible cause for my recurrent miscarriages is that Brian may be a carrier of some type of genetic/chromosomal abnormality. Even though his semen analysis has revealed high quality sperm, that same analysis would not be able to tell us if there are chromosome issues. There is a blood test called karyotyping, which is basically a chromosomal analysis. That blood test would tell us if there are any genetic/chromosomal abnormalities that Brian may be passing on through his sperm.
After our appointment with Dr. Schmidt, we met with one of his nurses, Kathy. She is so wonderful. She actually got choked up when we talked about everything. She also makes me feel like I am her only patient. She gave me the order for the labwork and also gave us some consent paperwork to fill out for the frozen embryo transfer.
I went to the lab on Friday morning to have my blood drawn. Dr. Schmidt wasn't kidding when he said they would be drawing a lot of blood. They drew 12 vials of blood!!! The results should be back in about a week, and one of Dr. Schmidt's nurses will call me to discuss the results. Depending on those results, we may also have Brian do the karyotyping blood work. That blood test can be very expensive if insurance doesn't cover it, but fortunately, our insurance does cover it! :)
We are hoping to do the frozen embryo transfer in the next couple months. I am so scared to go through this all again and possibly face a fourth miscarriage, but I am also so hopeful that we will finally figure out why I keep miscarrying and hopefully will be able to keep it from happening again. We want to be parents more than anything, and we will do anything we have to do to make that happen. If it turns out that Brian carries a genetic/chromosomal abnormality or we aren't able to get pregnant with the embryos that we have left, then our journey to get pregnant will be over and we will pursue adoption. We weren't ready to talk about adoption until recently, but we have started talking about it in the last month. The whole prospect of adoption is very overwhelming to us, but I have a few friends who adopted, so I am going to contact them to find out how to start the process.
When we first met with Dr. Schmidt over 3 years ago, I never would have imagined that we would still be childless today. Part of me feels like the universe is trying to tell Brian and me that we just aren't meant to be parents. But, a bigger part of me knows that I should not think that way, and that I need to just keep the faith. If we end up with a child, no matter how we get there, that child will be so, so, so loved and cherished ... not just by Brian and me, but by everyone who has stood by us and supported us throughout this journey. While I am not sure how our journey will end, I am certain that we
will be parents. That's all that matters.
