Infertility/Miscarriage

[flamingo25]

Any other mustachians struggling (or have struggled) with infertility and/or miscarriage?

I can get pregnant easily but just had my 5th consecutive miscarriage. We have had loads of testing done with a fertility specialist but everything has been inconclusive. We are awaiting some further test results before deciding for sure what to do next. We are also seriously considering adoption.

Anyone else? And to make it MMM if you have pursued fertility treatments or adoption how do you budget for it?

[GizmoTX]

I'm so sorry you are having to go through this, & hope you get more answers & help.

It took 5 years of infertility treatments (with lots of down time in between the actual attempts) before I became pregnant. (I was about to quit.) Because I was age 45 & this was our only/last attempt, my doctor prescribed progesterone shots for most of the first trimester, just in case. We had a healthy boy, early by C-section at week 34 when my weekly checkup showed a double wrap of the cord around his neck. He's 21 now.

[wjquigs]

Yep.  Several years of trying even before the first miscarriage. I can't offer any advice--what you're going through supercedes any financial considerations. Good luck and I hope it works out for you.
Bill

[maricela]

I was similar in conceived easy but many, many miscarriages. Never conclusive diagnosis, but did carry my son to term finally on lovenox for suspected autoimmune or clotting issues. Then had another bout of mc's and finally a second tubal which ended our trying (no desire to do IVF). We are now in the adoption process.  We took proceeds from a past home sale that we didn't roll into the next one to jumpstart our fund and saved the rest. $30k all fees, home study, support, etc. Foster to adopt would be much cheaper, but with a son already, we weren't ready for that uncertainty. .

[fartface]

Praying for you to carry a healthy baby to term in 2015!

Two things: 1) it could be low progesterone levels -- I had to take supplements early on to prevent miscarriage
or 2) your antibodies may be attacking the embryo/fetus before it can get to 2nd trimester and there is an easy 'cure' for this if the dr.'s determine that is the reason....

Good luck to you and God bless!

[Spondulix]

My sister in law went through fertility treatment to get pregnant at 27 or 28, and was told she would never conceive naturally. At 32 she had a surprise pregnancy (with her second child). Would you adopt just to be younger parents? I'm 34 and my doctor is telling me I've got a couple years to worry about fertility treatments, if I want to wait.

One thing I'm learning is that fertility issues are very common. It's just something we don't talk about as openly as maybe we should.

How is your stress level?

[kathrynd]

I had my first child,and tried for a couple of years and couldn't get pregnant.
Also had tests, and they could't find anything wrong.
 I finally get pregnant then had  4 early miscarriages,
and  then finally my second child was born almost 5 years later.


Decided to try for my third child straight away, since  #2 took so long.
I got pregnant right away...and there is only 12 months and 12 days between them

Having the 2 close together was great.They never remember not having each other, and they always got along very well.

[flamingo25]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. So far I have done progesterone, extra folic acid, baby aspirin, lovenox and acupuncture. Both my husband and I have had karyotype (chromosome) testing and I have had loads of testing to ensure normal uterus, etc. All normal.

We have 30k saved up to put towards adoption expenses should we go that route. Fortunately we only want one child so however we go about being parents we will only have to do it once.

Infertility really sucks but it's nice to know I'm not alone.

[Chaplin]

At least two miscarriages we know of before success; probably others we don't know about.

Without exaggeration, our fine little son is the result of one final attempt before we went the route of incurring some big expenses.

Ours, and many friends' experiences indicate that this is far, far more common than is widely discussed.

[deltabelle]

I'm so sorry you are experiencing this.  I was in your shoes as well over 11 years ago.  We tried for over four years and had numerous tests, etc.  I had PCOS.  We saved up enough money to do an IUI and I got pregnant, but miscarried very early.    We had made the decision to not explore any other procedures to try because we knew it was just way out of our price range at the time.  It was a depressing time, for sure.

A little over a year later I got pregnant and we now have an (almost) 10 year old son.

When our son was 7 I surprisingly got pregnant again.  We weren't exactly preventing, but we figured since nothing had happened in that span of time, I most likely wouldn't ever get pregnant again.  Unfortunately, that pregnancy resulted in an early loss as well.

Hoping the best for you and that your dreams of becoming parents will come true soon. 

[GuitarStv]

It may help if you ask someone about your thyroid numbers.  Low or high TSH numbers can cause issues with miscarriage and fertility.  Many doctors are using outdated safety measurements for pregnancy, most recent studies show a much lower range than was previously thought acceptable.

[ysette9]

I definitely feel for you and you are not alone. I found the Fertility Friend app/website really helpful for finding a group of people going through similar things. There were some resources for educating myself as well as just the emotional support. It is easy to feel like you are going through this all alone when in fact a lot of people suffer from fertility problems.

You didn't say how far along you were when you had these miscarriages; that can make a big difference in what might be going on. My own story is that we had two miscarriages well into the 2nd trimester before finally having our baby. I was on baby aspirin, lovenox, and prednisone (suspected immune problem) during the pregnancy. She also came early at 34 weeks and was very small  (only 16g over the medical definition for "extremely low birth weight"). Thankfully she is now strong and healthy, but it is really scare to think about what could happen if we ever tried to get pregnant again!

[Jeremy]

Very sorry that you are experiencing this :(

My wife is due with our first child in 3 months, and about 4 months ago woke up in the night in a pool of blood.  A mad dash to the emergency room, lots of drugs and shots (progesterone and many other unpronounceable words), and a month of bed rest seemed to stabilize things.  I don't know if I've ever been that scared

This pregnancy was from our 2nd round of IVF, which we did in Taiwan to save 80% off US prices


We have some friends back in Southern CA that are already $150k deep into fertilization procedures, still with no success.  They are in their early 40's, and are now talking about using a surrogate as it doesn't seem anything else is working

Very sorry that you are experiencing this, and hope you find a solution

[mrsggrowsveg]

I am so sorry to hear of your struggles.  I think that miscarriages and infertility are surprisingly more common than people know.  I had one miscarriage, a healthy baby and then a stillbirth due to a chromosomal disorder.  Have you seen a maternal fetal medicine specialist?  They may be able to offer some help since getting pregnant doesn't seem to be as much of an issue.  I hope that you can get some answers and a healthy baby in the near future.