Intro

Welcome to my blog. I must have created this 6 months ago or more but never felt ready to post until now. At first I had a hard time deciding what to focus on. My life has changed in so many ways the last few years. So in the end, I decided I will blog about it all - and folks who are interested in one particular facet, say, gluten free living, can search on those tags.

A bit more about me before I dive into some actual topics: I'm 40, happily married 5 years to my husband Mike who is 42. We've been trying to have a kid for almost 4 of those years, and have been fraught with "recurrent pregnancy loss". This was back with my original OB (let's call her OB1) - who after 3 losses tested me for hormonal and basic clotting factors (nothing found), then referred me to a specialist (RE1) who basically told me "you're old, get used to miscarriage, keep trying and eventually you'll get lucky.". After my 4th loss I left OB1 and switched to a new one (OB2) who did a bunch of tests to rule out structural issues (none found) but did show my immune system was attacking my body for some reason. I was retested a month later, and the antibodies were even higher. OB2 told me to wait it out, and call her if I ever had swollen joints. 3 months later I did, so OB2 referred me to a rheumatologist (RH1) who ran even more tests, all negative. We also went up to San Francisco to see a world-renowned infertility specialist (RE2) who basically told me the same thing as RE1 - "unexplained infertility, keep trying". Finally, through telling my story to friends and co-workers, I learned of the Alan Beer Center who focuses on infertility due to maternal immune factors - this is where I found at last my "A-Team" of doctors - a reproductive immunologist (RI1), an infertility OB (OB3) and my current OB I am now seeing (OB4). Dr Beer had recently published a book outlining his treatments - I felt like the book was written about me. I registered on their site, completed some more tests and had a consultation - many issues found! Most people would be upset about finding issues but after now 5 losses, I was so hoping for someone to tell me what was wrong and how to fix it. So in the Fall of 2007, in addition to a huge career change (which I will blog about some other time), I began various treatments to fix my immune system.

About a month into the treatments, through my own research based on some of the recent test results, I realized that I was probably gluten intolerant, if not full blown celiac disease. Words cannot describe how going off of gluten positively changed my health - and I will go into that in detail in the future as well.

Just about the same time I went off gluten, I also started regular acupuncture, as apparently my Chi was depleted - so I saw an acupuncturist (Acu1) for about a year. I did feel better after the treatments but definitely got tired of weekly visits, so this year I have not been back yet. It's hard to see so many doctors so often, and mix in endless blood draws and treatments.

After starting the immune treatments, and identifying gluten as an issue, I went to a local practice who specializes in gluten intolerance, where I saw a nutritionist (Nut1). He confirmed my suspicion that gluten is very bad for me, and through my urging, referred me to a gastroenterologist (Gas1) who did the invasive tests to see if I had villi damage signaling a true diagnosis for celiac disease. Unfortunately, since I had already done a self-directed gluten free trial and my body began to heal, the test was inconclusive for celiac, although lots of inflammation was found. So I decided to stay off gluten anyway since I felt so much better and realized a lifetime of consuming basically "arsenic" probably had something to do with my losses.

Flash forward 6 months off gluten - pregnant again (#6) and for the first time we were seeing regular growth on ultrasounds. Unfortunately we were crushed to find no heartbeat at 10 weeks (which was strong at 9 weeks) and testing confirmed a new challenge - advanced maternal age sunk in these 3 years - trisomy 21 (down syndrome). So we nailed some of our issues but now I'm truly old and have to hope for a good egg. So we decided to try an IVF cycle (with a highly praised RE who works with the Beer center - RE3) even though I can get pregnant easily - because IVF has a test (PGS) which can test 9 of the chromosomes of an embryo. We figured if you can start out with good chromosomes and my body knows how get pregnant we have this in the bag. Well, not so much - the cycle failed. So we hunkered down and waited for cycle #2 with RE3, but got pregnant naturally again. Lucky pregnancy #7 (or 8, if you want to count IVF #1 as a pregnancy - I don't.). And this one has taken! For the first time ever, I made it past that horrible first trimester and the nausea went away. We even made it past the level 2 ultrasound and amnio - and are thrilled that I'm carrying a healthy girl, due at the end of October! We are still in shock and disbelief but it's slowly sinking in. After 7 pregnancies and one failed IVF we finally get to believe we are going to have a baby, and start planning for her! This is a very exciting time for us.

Which takes me to the rest of the intro - how did we make it through the last 3 years? The answer is Felix - the most amazing, loving, smart yellow lab you have ever met. I will post more about him in the future but to summarize, Felix is our world and we are so grateful that he is in our lives.

But we'll be away from Felix for a little while -as you will see in some upcoming posts. We are off to Alaska for a bit of R&R. We planned this just after finding out I was pregnant with #7, and figured by now we'd either be happily (and miraculously) still pregnant, or we'd be recovering from yet another loss - perfect timing.

Thanks for stopping by.