Great new research findings… but too late for me

Have just been listening to Woman’s Hour with Siobhan Quenby, Professor of Obstetrics at Warwick Medical School who is part of a ICL and WMS team that has discovered a problem with the inner womb lining that may cause recurrent miscarriage and infertility.

Low levels of the protein enzyme SGK1 in the womb lining was found in women with recurrent miscarriage and high levels in those people with unexplained infertility.

Experiments on mice suggest that flushing the womb can help those with unexplained infertility to carry, and a treatment to increase the level of the enzyme could help prevent recurrent miscarriage.

They think that treatment may be available within five years…. ( I would be 43 – so no good to me – but for younger Fertility Fighters this offers some real hope).

People can offer to get involved in the research. If this round of IVF doesn’t work, then I will definitely offer to have my womb lining tested – even if it won’t benefit me directly.

 The person to contact if you are interested in supporting this study is found at:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/med/staff/quenby/

Consultancy appointment and post bleed scan

I am still bleeding/spotting red blood. Yesterday I wrote a long email to the consultant that I saw today with an update about what has happened so far this pregnancy and with all of the questions that I know I will instantly forget once I enter the Consultancy room.

It may be OTT to do this, but I really want to know that if all continues that I will be monitored closely and that everything will be done that can be done to help me carry this time.

I went to the hospital expecting to leave with no pregnancy.

The Consultant called me in and said – ‘well let’s do a scan first to see what the state of play is’. We went to the ultrasound room.

I couldn’t believe it when he said that both babies were still there. He turned the screen to me and showed me them and played me their heartbeats. After 72 hours of angst, I cried. The area that Chirpy had identified as the third sac was no longer there. Instead it was an area of bobbly grey with some small areas of black dotted around.

‘I think that this was a chorionic bleed, rather than a third sac.’ He said. You have bled most of it out. But it may have been under the placenta’.

It was a really big haematoma – it must have been about 10cm across – as big as a sac. For the time being I am relieved. 

In the Consultation room we go through my list of questions. He is pretty sound in his responses. He tells me that I am ‘an anxious patient’…! I don’t know really what he means by this… I am OF COURSE anxious because I have been bleeding for three weeks, because this is pregnancy six, because this is my last round of NHS funded IVF… because I want these babies!!! Perhaps I ask too many questions… The best patients are the quiet ones who do as told, who don’t push for answers, but I have been there and done that and for all of the referrals for tests here there and everywhere, I just got older and less fertile…

He asks me how often I would like to be seen. I think to myself that I should capitalise on my anxious status. As often as possible I say.

So I now have fortnightly appointments set up for the foreseeable. This offers me some reassurance at least. I really hope that the bleeding stops and I don’t have to spend the next two weeks in bed as well…

 

Another major bleed

I don’t know how many of you bleed during your pregnancies, but I always have. Many people bleed and don’t miscarry. In the main, this hasn’t been my experience, so bleeding makes me panic.

Yesterday, I was in bed as still spotting from the last bleed, and I felt a little gush of something. I wasnt sure, but went to the bathroom. It was blood in my underwear. Hoping that that was all, and that it would be a little bleed, like the one two and a half weeks ago, I sat on the sofa, had some water and waited.

Unfortunately, this was not going to subside. Another bathroom trip and this time gushing red blood. And again and again.

I called my husband. He came home from work.

I can’t quite explain the mode that I go into when I bleed. I am almost emotionally paralysed with fear and my body takes over – it just functions. Emotions shut down and it is almost like some feral survival instinct kicks in.

For 24 hours I bled red blood filling up over 6 sanitary towels and the toilet bowl.

I am still bleeding now but less badly.

I called the hospital when I started to bleed yesterday, but they can’t scan me until Monday afternoon, when I am seeing my Consultant anyway, so just said that it was best that I stayed at home as it was probably a nicer place to miscarry if I was going to! The only thing that I have to hold onto is the fact that there has been no pain, and I haven’t yet passed anything resembling an embryo.

It will be a long weekend. I can’t believe that they can both have survived this. I have been on bed rest for two and a half weeks now, and the days feel long at the best of times.