PSYCHE!

Remember that one time, when I had a really invasive ultrasound with dye and iodine and saline dripping from everywhere?  And the resulting picture of my uterus resembled a butterfly instead of a triangle?  And we figured that was the cause of my multiple miscarriages and figured there was surgery and/or in-vitro fertilization in my future?

JUST KIDDING.  That was all a funny joke.

Turns out I don’t have any sort of uterine anomaly whatsoever.  Rather than my uterus dipping down in the middle to form a heart, it in fact bows UPWARD slightly.

HAHAHAHAHAH.  Ahem.

This news is good for many reasons.  I don’t need a surgery.  I won’t ever get an answer of “your uterus won’t allow you to ever carry a child.”  We probably don’t need in-vitro.

However, a part of me is frustrated because it means that I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME. 

We have a big pow-wow consultation with our fertility specialist next Monday to go over all of the results.  That includes my elebenteen hundred blood tests telling everything from hormone levels – before, during and after menstruation, genetic mutations, to possible clotting/coagulation disorders.  We’ll also go over the analysis of Matt’s, um, boys, as well as the complete results of my MRI and all my ultrasounds.

Right now here’s what we know:

1.       I do not have a uterine anomaly including the wrong shape, pollups, fibroids or endometriosis

2.       I do not have any sort of clogging of the fallopian tubes

3.       I have plenty of maturing eggs in both ovaries (currently 12 on the right and 9 on the left!)

4.       We do not have any genetic anomalies or incompatible genetics

5.       I ovulate at the right time

6.       Boy oh boy are we able to get pregnant

The remaining possibilities for what could be wrong seem to be:

1.       I have some sort of blood clotting disorder – either it’s clots to easily or not easily enough.  This wouldn’t have affected me in my life, given that I’ve never been stabbed or bled profusely for any real reason, but with tiny baby veins and the vascular nature of everything that’s going on in forming a baby, the smallest clot  - or lack thereof, can be deadly.  The solution for this is usually some heparin and/or aspirin every day.

2.       Matt’s boys may have some sort of defect that is causing the babies to not form correctly.  This is not very likely given how far into the last pregnancy we got, but it’s still something we want to look into

3.       I might have a hormone imbalance.  Again, given the fact that I was in the second trimester last time, this is not likely.  Usually a hormone imbalance will cause the uterus to not recognize what’s going on and try to get rid of it.  It’s usually accompanied by cramping or contractions and bleeding but the baby is usually fine unless the uterus succeeds in “getting rid of it.”  This MAY have been the case with our second pregnancy given how quickly after the ultrasound with the heartbeat I started bleeding but the first and third were not like this…the baby died and the uterus didn’t do anything about it until my hormone levels dropped to the the point that the uterus knew something was wrong.

So um, we’re sort of down to clotting disorder.  If that’s what it is, I can start trying to get pregnant right away.  If that’s not what it is…I have no idea.  That’s the frustrating part.  It might be NOTHING.  We might just have the crap luck of losing three babies in a row – maybe even more. 

I’m crossing my fingers that I have a clotting disorder.  If that’s it going forward we should be just fine.  Granted, it will also be a lot frustrating if that’s it because taking a friggin’ aspirin every day would have saved us a lot of trauma.  As frustrating as that will be, I trust that all of this is happening for our family at the right time.  Whatever the answer is, it’s the right one.  I just keep having to remind myself of that.