Sunday, March 04, 2007

Erm... okay

Haven’t been particularly well – I have a recurrent inner ear inflammation (symptoms – dizziness, slight nausea, can’t drive or ride my bike, tired, doctor prescribes something which I think is antihistamine) which I suspect flares up when I’m busiest because it’s stress related; and I’ve been very busy at work; and I can’t really blog at work because a) I don’t have time and b) Blogger and Macs don’t mix; and I don’t really want to blog from the PC at home because I would rather veg on the sofa. Hence no posts.

I read the article on miscarriage that Thalia linked to, and emailed the authors to ask if they had analysed their risk factors separately for recurrent miscarriers. I did phrase it in fairly statistical terms so hopefully it will have made sense to them (though I am not a statistician, medics think that only statisticians know about statistics, but psychologists are supposed to do their own statistics, so I sound a little like I know what I’m talking about, but medics never believe that I do anyway). But they haven’t replied. However apart from some minor things (like multivitamins, which are probably just an indicator of a) caring or b) eating properly in general), the article also had a strong suggestion that stress – either one-off or long term- has a significant impact on miscarriage. And I have only ever got pregnant out of university term times, and two of my miscarriages have been during busy teaching periods. Including this last one. And I am beginning to wonder if I should really be pregnant and working; and of course feeling very guilty and sad that dashing around between 4w and 5w could have been bad for this one, when I ended up off work at 5w anyway. Something else to talk to the consultant about, I think.


Speaking of which, after a bit of phone runaround, the consultant’s secretary thinks my FSH/LH must be fine (or the consultant would have given her some wording to the contrary to send/tell me) but the genetic tests aren’t back yet. I assume that it’s quicker to do PGD than to do this because they know what they are looking for – clearly people can’t wait 10 weeks for genetic testing on an embryo. I’m going to ring again 2 weeks before our early April appointment, anyway, just in case. I’ve booked us in for an open evening at Small But Perfectly Formed Clinic which a) does PGD and b) happens to be right round the corner from our bijoux flat-ette pied-a-terre type thing. If we did IVF there we’d have to consider not just the cost of treatment but the lost income… But as we’ve just watched the Money Programme “The Cost of Kids” (£180K per child, pregnancy-18, apparently) and have decided any children are only having Oxfam or Freecycle clothes and equipment, perhaps we’ll save at that end…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Children don't need much, honestly - I can keep mine amused for hours on end with toilet paper. (oops)

As for stress being a factor - this is one of those awful double binds. I remember stressing muchly about losing this baby when I was in the early stages of preganncy with DD. I had to physically leave the house each morning with DH because otherwise I would just end up in a sobbing heap on the bed. My body forced me to rest because I was just so tired, but otherwise, boy, was I stressed. And stressed about being stressed. And so on and so forth. And working two part-time jobs. And if you gave up work in order to fall pg, the distinct lack of baby might be even harder than it is now, when you've got Other Stuff to take your mind off this.

to cut a long story short, don't be too hard on yourself!