Success stories/advice after multiple miscarriages

[Ctk123]

Hi,

I’ve had it confirmed today that I’m having a missed miscarriage. Should have been 7+5 weeks but the gestational sac was empty (I’ve had multiple scans over the past 12 days so it’s definitely over). This is now my third miscarriage so I can add the 1% recurrent miscarriage statistic to all these horribly small statistics we’re falling into. Each of my miscarriages have been different (first was missed miscarriage found on 12 week scan after seeing a heartbeat at 7 weeks, second was a chemical pregnancy). This miscarriage hurts as we tested our embryos this time around so it should be a normal embryo, we had PIMSI to support with male factor infertility and high DNA fragmentation, I had IVIG and have been taking prednisolene as I have elevated cytokines. This was our 5th transfer. We have 4 embryos left and I was wondering if anyone had done anything else to get a successful result. Should we consider a double embryo transfer next time? Any advice would be very much appreciated.

[Backagain987]

I am so sorry for your losses, I had 6 miscarriages before I was lucky enough to have my daughter (mix of chemicals and MC's). Similar to you I have had a blighted ovum (empty sac) and also heartbeat at 7 week but none later. My heart breaks for you because I know the pain, especially when you think maybe this is the one.

I don't have much advice because it was decided that mine were due to my old eggs and chromosomal issues and I ended up going donor, and if you embryos are testing ok then thats unlikely to be the case with you. However I did also have a HUGE amount of progesterone with my successful cycle which I hadn't had on all my MC cycles. Could have been a coincidence but just wondered how much you were having as might be something to consider xx

[Ctk123 in reply to Backagain987]

Thank you and I’m so sorry for your losses. So glad you got your daughter in the end. I was on Lubion and cyclogest to start with but they added in more progesterone after my transfer as my levels weren’t as high as the clinic wanted. Maybe they’ll have me on more progesterone from the start next time.

[Xmishell37]

Hey, I was advised that doing a double transfer won't avoid the risk of miscarriage but could potentially be more dangerous for an embryo that is likely to survive, if one miscarries ❤️ it's hard to know what's best id say go with your gut, I'm nearing the 1% club with 2 out of 3 transfers ending in very early MC, also dealing with high DNA fragmentation but hoping the numbers have got to even out soon! Good luck 🤞🏻 xx

[LouCollier]

Firstly I'm so sorry you are going through this. I had 3 miscarrages before my son and its heart breaking. My son is DE IVF but I also went on 20mg prednisolene and was on high progesterone when I had him along with blood thinners.

Have you heard of Tommys Trust. they do a lot of research into miscarriages and you can be refered to them by your GP for a consultation. You can also speak to your GP to be refered to your normal NHS clinc for the normal NHS miscarraige tests.

I hope you find your answers xx

[Ctk123 in reply to LouCollier]

I’m sorry for you losses but glad you have your son. I was on the same dose of prednisolene and blood thinners this cycle too. I’ve had a lot of miscarriage tests done already, not sure what tests Tommys offer and if there’s anything additional to what I’ve already had. Hoping maybe there was an issue with this embryo (despite the testing) and maybe the same protocol will work next time x

[Sansan87]

Hi there

I am so sorry to hear about your losses. I have no words to make you feel better but please don’t lose hope.

I’m guessing you have done all of the RPL tests?

We had multiple miscarriages as well - 5 confirmed but I am sure there were a few more that I dismissed as late periods. They never really found a reason.

We did welcome a baby two years ago via IVF and genetic testing. Here are my comments and thoughts below

- have you done the EMMA/ALICE tests? My results showed bad bacteria and chronic inflammation. I was then out on antibiotics including intrauterine antibiotics for a few months.

- I was switched from predisinone to dexmethasone as my HCG numbers weren’t rising properly. I think this is a stronger version of pedisonone.

Secondly, sadly PGTs are not that accurate. I’ve been doing a lot of research into it lately including a session with a genetic counselor this morning. They take a few cells from the outer layer and hope it’s reflective of the inner layer. In fact I mentioned in another post that we had an embryo test normal under one test and abnormal under another. Similarly sometimes the tests (because of the thresholds they use) show a mosaic embryo as normal.

Will you test your other embryos?

[Esb27 in reply to Sansan87]

Sorry to jump in here but how comes you were on predisinone ? was it due to high NK cells?

[Sansan87 in reply to Esb27]

I think they were slightly higher than usual but not alarming. I guess because I had so many miscarriages they decided to throw everything at it!

[Esb27 in reply to Sansan87]

Yeah makes sense!! I've had 2 missed miscarriages and 3 chems, so am wondering if NK cells are my issue but it's just sooo expensive to test for them😭. Did you do yours through your private IVF clinic? Am hoping that a septum removal will help with my RMs (which I just had sorted for me) but have a horrible feeling it will be NK cells or something immunology related.

[Sansan87 in reply to Esb27]

I can understand your frustration. The tests are expensive and ultimately they just end up giving you the same meds anyway - I.e. it’s not as if the meds are tailored depending on the level of NK cells etc. a lot of clinics actually give steroids/intralipids empirically so can you not suggest this? They are relatively harmless anyway.

[Sansan87 in reply to Esb27]

Also I’m so sorry to hear about your losses. Did you do ivf?

[Esb27 in reply to Sansan87]

yeah, so far only two FETs via NHS funding, one ended in a chemical and one failed. I can get pregnant fine naturally, it's just keeping them. We were kinda pushed into IVF as i've had two ectopics as well, so we figured with the embryo being placed in the uterus we'd be at less risk (as naturally my risk is really high). But it kinda feels like IVF isn't really addressing the issues! I'm sure if we went privately we'd get better results, we just can't afford it right now.

[Sansan87 in reply to Esb27]

I’m really sorry to hear that. It’s frustrating when you don’t get answers. Sounds a bit similar to my situation - we were conceiving almost every other month but it always ended in an early miscarriage which is why we went down the Ivf route.

Does the nhs not offer any further rounds given your history?

[Esb27 in reply to Sansan87]

Thanks. Were you successful with IVF? I guess if you had the NK cells tests (and others) you are likely to have been anyways.

We technically have 1 more round but the rules are weird, it has to be another egg collection and fresh transfer but my ovaries are polycystic (not PCOS though) so I got OHSS soooo bad on the smallest amount of meds last egg collection we did, so I really don't want to do that again!! My consultant is taking it to some board to get them to try to change the rules but they are so ridged I doubt it will happen.

[Sansan87 in reply to Esb27]

Ah I see and gosh I feel your pain. I always end up with OHSS and once ended up in hospital it was so bad. It always puts me off more cycles but ultimately we have now done 9! My doctor always prescribes me clexane (and another medicine i can’t remember the name) after the retrieval to help manage OhSS symptoms.

Yes we welcomed a baby girl two years ago (5th round) and now trying for number 2. I think the first few rounds of ivf were a write off with doctors who didn’t care very much and just used a standard protocol.

Round 4 and 5 I switched doctors and he left no stone unturned.

[Esb27 in reply to Sansan87]

Oh that's interesting you get it too! Yeah I ended up in hospital too!! Very interesting about clexane post retrieval...I just don't think my NHS clinic would do that as I've never got anything offered to me except the standard protocol.

Oh congrats on your baby girl, that's lovely. So nice to hear it can happen. What were you on for that? just the dexmethasone ?

[Sansan87 in reply to Esb27]

I was on lots of progesterone, intralipid every 3 weeks, dexmethasone and all the other usuals.

[Esb27 in reply to Sansan87]

Oh wow - are intralipid's expensive? I've heard they can be!

[Sansan87 in reply to Esb27]

Sadly yes. The actual intralipid is very cheap but the clinics charge a lot because they administer it.

[Esb27 in reply to Sansan87]

Damn

[Fruitandflowers]

I'm sorry, it's not a great club to be part of. I was advised against double transfers (in fact my consultant refused to do it) as I was told the risk to embryos, baby and mother was too great in cases where there had been implantation. My consultant said he would only consider it after several BFNs as that would change the risk balance. Obviously plenty of women have twins or multiples through IVF and naturally, but that's just what I was told. In terms of anything else, my consultant didn't seem to have much faith in genetic testing and said we'd be better off not testing and transferring what we had as he said when it doesn't work or doesn't develop it's usually am embryo issue which can't or isn't detected by the testing or embryologist grading. I didn't like the idea and risk or that but we did have a successful FET straight after he said this and the only things we changed were progesterone (lubion and utrogestan) plus one asprin a day - *but* exactly that protocol resulted in a BFN trying for a sibling. My consultant said that with unexplained infertility it's numbers and that he would expect 1 in 3 to implant (not ultimately be successful) and that was the same as natural conceptions, so his view was as we'd had 4 out of 5 implant and develop to differnet degrees, that was way above the odds. So applying that logic, 3 out of 3 implanting for you would be similar and promising. But it hurt a lot losing them and I had begin to think we were just making bad embryos or my body was attacking them, or that the womb environment or hormones weren't right, no matter what the test results said. But by just transferring and then randomly TTC, we've just had our second baby in less than 2 years. So I honestly don't know what worked and didn't and maybe it is just chance and numbers, even though that's really hard to accept. Not so say don't investigate everything and do seriously grill your clinic and doctors, just we didn't come up with anything.