Thursday, February 5, 2009
Finally some real answers, and hopefully a solution
First of all, thanks to my husband for that accurate and oh so technical explanation to my problem. I'm sure everyone understood exactly what he was talking about. Gotta love him! Anyway, my appointment the other day went better than I expected it to. Way back when we were originally doing all those tests my doctor told me I had 2 problems. The first was the protein C deficiency and the 2nd was the MTHFR mutation. Those are the reasons she sent me to the hematologist. Well, the hematologist repeated the tests and told me I was normal after all. I was pretty upset about it and that's when we decided to forget about baby stuff for a while. Since the hematologist told me I was normal last time I fully expected to go in and have the doctor tell me there wasn't much else she could test for. However, it turns out the hematologist's office was pretty misleading. Apparently when they told me I was normal they just meant I don't actually have a protein C deficiency. My doctor has explained that incorrect result as not a lab error but my hormone imbalance from the miscarriage. However, I do still have that mutation and it is my problem. This mutation doesn't cause me problems in my daily life, just if I'm pregnant. The good news is there is a solution and my doctor is pretty confident it will work. The plan is this, when we start trying to conceive I have to take a prenatal vitamin plus an additional 6 folic acid supplements every day. My body doesn't absorb folic acid very well, so I have to take it in massive doses to make sure the fetus absorbs enough. Then, once I get a positive pregnancy test I have to call the doctor as soon as possible to get a confirmatory blood test done. Once the positive blood test comes back then I have to start daily injections of a blood thinner. This mutation I have causes tiny blood clots to form in the developing placenta and they block its formation. This is why development stopped so early with the previous 2 pregnancies. The placenta couldn't form, so the fetus couldn't form either. I have to do the injections everyday throughout the entire pregnancy. Overall I think it seems like a pretty simple solution and I have high hopes that this will work. Now all we have to do is start trying. I don't know when it will happen. I have put it all on Darren. I am ready now, but I don't know what he wants to do. He just keeps going on about how November/December birthdays suck. I don't want to put it off just because of that. We will see what happens. We also have to remember that whatever my due date is we need to subtract a couple of weeks. My doctor says that because of the blood thinner I will have to be induced 2 to 3 weeks before my due date anyway. She says that the blood thinners can actually cause problems with the placenta at the very end so they want to get the baby out as soon as it is safe to do so. If we started trying right away, based on my cycle, I would be due around the 3rd week of November, but if I were to deliver early it would put me right at the end of October or first week of November, and there is nothing wrong with that. I guess I will just get to the end of my pill pack every month and ask Darren if he wants me to stop or start a new pack. Hopefully it won't be too long. There really isn't any reason to wait now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment