After my surprise pregnancy with my daughter at 19, I never expected to be someone to struggle with recurrent miscarriage. I’ve already been aware for years about how chemicals in products, the foods we eat etc. are harming our bodies. However, I went through a busy stage of life working a chaotic job and raising my daughter I pretty much put on my rose colored glasses and just ignored everything I was so passionate about when it came to non-toxic living and my health. I started buying ALL the products, bleaching my hair, eating garbage food. After about a year of that I was ready to start trying for baby #2 with my husband. We suffered a tragic missed miscarriage of our son Carter at 11.5 weeks. We tried again and again only to experience 3 more miscarriages.
That is why I am where I’m at today. When trying to get to the bottom of my recurrent miscarriages it became evident I was struggling with a hormonal imbalance. I was ovulating between cd 17-20 leaving me with about a week long luteal phase and irregular periods. If you are familiar with what it takes to conceive a baby you know that this can cause early miscarriages.
The corpus luteum starts producing more progesterone after ovulation to avoid prematurely shedding the lining of your uterus and help thicken it. When a baby is conceived this is crucial for implantation. If the uterine lining sheds early before the baby has a chance to implant properly it will result in a miscarriage. After the first trimester the placenta takes over and starts producing progesterone. This is one of the reasons first trimester miscarriages can occur. You need a sufficient amount to maintain a pregnancy thats why its called Progesterone (pro) + (gest)ation. One way to tell if you be deficient in progesterone is by tracking your ovulation with strips and more accurately BBT. If you ovulate late or have a short luteal phase (the phase between ovulation and menstruation) this could be a sign of a luteal phase defect/low progesterone.
I ended up going to my OBGYN . She drew some blood for a thyroid panel and some other things all which checked out normal. I then asked for a hormonal panel which she refused. Proceeding to tell me, “your hormones really aren’t going to give us much of an answer to why you can’t keep a pregnancy.” She also said “your best option is to call me as soon as you get a positive pregnancy so we can start you on progesterone pills immediately to prevent another miscarriage.”
I’m was not willing to accept that my body was broken. I knew this was a wakeup call and I knew I could change where this was going. Especially, upon researching the scary effects synthetic progesterone has on the body.
The next step was a saline ultrasound to look for uterine abnormalities such as polyps, fibroids etc. I agreed to the ultrasound which revealed to be a small polyp. She recommended I have the polyp removed through surgery at the hospital. The reason behind this is that if you have multiple or large polyps it can interfere with implantation leading to miscarriage. I had mixed emotions of this. On one had I’m grateful to have more answers. It also confirmed my suspicion of low progesterone, estrogen dominance or both. This is because developing polyps in the uterus are believed to be caused my excess estrogen.
Your cycle is a vital sign. Infertility, Uterine and breast cancer among other health issues are rampant nowadays. It’s just not something I want to mess. I’ve also had a history with ovary cysts and brutal periods from high school.
I had very mixed feelings about the surgery. My gut instinct was to not do it as I heard they can come and go. You can also do Castor Oil Packs to dissolve polyps, cysts and fibroids which I’ll link my blog post here all about that. I also found Progessence Plus which spoiler alert it changed my life, more on that in my blog post linked here. I hoped to take some time to try this and come back for a follow up ultrasound to check if it was gone.
Unfortunately, my insurance was about to end and it would cover 100% of surgery expenses and it was believed my new insurance would not. Due to this I had to make a very rushed decision to remove it and chose to do so.
Come surgery day it was time to remove and I was so nervous. The procedure also prohibts you from getting pregnant for at least 2 cycles to thicken the uterine lining back up. Upon waking up I was told the polyp was gone. Yet, they still scraped my uterus as protocol for testing. To be honest, this made me very upset. I felt as if it was all for nothing and now I was left to wait it out even longer to try again. I just felt my doctor wouldn’t take my questions and concerns seriously as she kept brushing off trying to get to the root cause of all of this
If you’re struggling with your fertility or miscarriage I am so glad you’re here. I hope that if you’re struggling hormonally that my blog blesses you. I’m so excited to share my journey to healing and sweet little rainbow baby.
I’ve tried so much and have so much more to share but linked below are my blog post I’ve made on how to balance your hormones!
In the past couple of months I’ve dove so deep into the importance of hormones for our overall wellbeing and fertility. I’ve made lots of changes that
