I insisted on progesterone level testing. The last OBGYN said it was pointless, because I had two healthy children so progesterone couldn't be an issue. That is true, if you completely ignore all my other history as well. Most pointedly, the fact that I developed Stage Four Endometriosis at some point, possibly right before the pregnancy with Lola, and that since her birth I've had a total of four surgeries, two of which took sizable portion of my left ovary.
The corpus luteum makes all the progesterone your fetus needs the first twelve weeks, until the placenta takes over. If my left ovary was put in charge of blooming this small progesterone factory, it's completely plausible that it failed to do so in the full measure, being that there is scar tissue in the way. Endometriosis is also becoming thought of more often as an autoimmune disease, and this is hooked like a knitting needle to the vast fabrics of your hormone factory. Progesterone is a hormone. Who knows how my disease, although I have conquered at least it's symptoms with a surgical specialist for my last two surgeries and a complete nutritional/supplemental disease beat-down, affects the production of hormones, so necessary to sustain even the healthiest embryo.
The test took a goddamn week to get ordered due to Kaiser back and forth calling and message board confusion. And it's low- 15. I'm about five and half weeks pregnant, and while 15 isn't unheard of, it's not a great sign for a 35 year old woman who had a miscarriage at 13 weeks last June. The baby died at 10 weeks, definitely soon enough for progesterone to be the cause. We had no testing done at the time to look at cause, being in shock, being totally unprepared to have to answer questions ten minutes after I delivered our dead baby. Do you want us to study your dead baby? They asked. Well, no. We didn't. We didn't know what it would mean, to not know.
Tomorrow I'm on the phone with Kaiser in the morning. I am going to demand an ultrasound, retest of my progesterone, immediate progesterone vaginal supplementation (oral is not as effective) and anticoagulant testing. If anyone has any experience or advice, I'm listening.
I'm fighting tooth and nail for this baby.
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"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open " M.R.
she's precocious / and she knows just what it takes / to make the pros blush
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what i thought love was is so much less than what it is
Our Pack: Dakota Wolf, Lola Moon, Ian Oliver and our baby, Ever Elizabeth
Someone may have stolen your dream when it was young and fresh and you were innocent. Anger is natural. Grief is appropriate. Healing is mandatory. Restoration is possible. -Jane Rubietta
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My dear child, who can tell? One can only tell that, by remembering something which happened where we lived before; and as we remember nothing, we know nothing about it; and no book, and no man, can ever tell us certainly.
Some couples don’t ask much of one another after they’ve worked out the fundamentals of jobs and children. Some live separate intellectual and cultural lives, and survive, but the most intense, most fulfilling marriages need, I think, to struggle toward some kind of ideological convergence. Norman Rush
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