How it Happened

I found out I was pregnant in January last year. Everything seemed to be fine at my first two OBGYN appointments at the beginning of March and April. I had the triple test done sometime in April and my doctor was concerned about the AFP level, it was slightly elevated. So he had me go for a level 2 ultrasound. That was scheduled for May 1st. That was when we got all the bad news. Isabella was 4 weeks behind in growth. Since she was so small it was hard to see a lot of her anatomy and she was turned the wrong way, but they think they saw a lesion on her lower back indicating a neural tube defect. Not only that but her head/brain showed abnormal development, her skull had a lemon shape and the cerebral cortex was banana shaped instead of barbell shaped. There was nothing good to any of it. I can't really remember what the brain/skull things meant because my doctor mostly fixated on her size as being of high concern. 6-7 weeks later I had a ton of blood tests done. They took 11-13 vials of blood. The results were mostly normal except one which indicated I have antiphospholipid antibody syndrome. This means that my blood clots too much, so when her placenta formed it was full of clots and she couldn't get enough nutrients or oxygen which is why she was so small, and why I never really got a belly even at 19 weeks. They repeated the test again 12 weeks later to confirm that I really did have APAS. It was positive again. So the outcome was that if I got pregnant again I would take a blood thinner, lovenox, from 8-10 weeks until the week before we decide to induce me. Then I would go back on it for a couple months after the baby was born until my estrogen levels came back down. March 1, 2008 I found out I was pregnant. I started taking the injections on April 1st and had gotten through 7 days of shots when I found out Sean had died. I hadn't taken my shot yet that day and my doctor told me not to in preparation for a D&C on Friday, April 11th, but then I had the complete miscarriage on Wednesday. It was just a coincident that I had my doctor's appointment and U/S on the 8th just to know that my baby was dead the day before the bleeding began. I can't imagine how much more freaked out I would have been if I didn't know that there was a chance it could happen. I saved the "products of conception" that came out. I even looked at it closely myself to see if I could see the baby. I had no idea what it was that I saw. But I brought it to my doctor's office and they sent it to be examined and cultured to see if it really was the most likely explanation of chromosomal abnormalities, we found out the chromosomes where normal, but there are a million other reasons for why a pregnancy fails. We also found out it was a boy. So Isabella died because of my as of then unknown blood clotting problem and Sean died because of who knows what. I know that it couldn't have been because of my blood stuff, because that doesn't affect the baby until the 2nd trimester or later, which is why Isabella made it to 19 weeks. So while statistically 1 in 3 or 4 pregnancies miscarry in the 1st trimester, it doesn't really make me feel any better about it. I figured I had all my bad luck with Isabella. On top of the shots during pregnancy, after I got the first set of blood test results my doctor had me start taking a low dose aspirin each day and 4000mcg (4mg) of folic acid a day. Still doing that. I have the rest of my 30 day supply of lovenox (in pre-filled needles) in my closet, hopefully I can use them before they expire (in 2010).