Second miscarriage - is there anything we can do??

[sugarandspite]

So just had my second miscarriage in 7 months. First was anembryonic pregnancy and natural mc at 10 weeks, this time a natural mc at 12wks with an ERPC afterwards. Baby alive and looking good at 8wk scan.

I understand that you only get referred to the recurrent miscarriage clinics after 3 losses but the idea of going into another pregnancy without knowing any more and just waiting to see if we lose this baby as well is torturous.

Is there any point talking to my gp? Are there any tests they might let us have at this stage?

Or is our only option to go privately? Has anyone done this?

I appreciate that the likelihood is that we'll be told its just down to bad luck, no identifiable reasons for the losses but I just feel I need to know something more than I do now.

Please, can anyone help?

[TigerSwallowTail]

I'm not sure if you can go private but I know that the Nhs go by the '3 consecutive loses' rule before doing anything about it.

To give you some hope, I had 2 miscarriages and then 2 weeks after my 2nd mc to my surprise I fell pregnant again and was terrified of anything going wrong. Everything was fine and I'm currently cuddling my 17 day old daughter while mn'ing .

[Waimea]

Really sorry you've had to go through this
I went to gp after 2 miscarriages and she was very sympathetic and referred me for testing
But might have been my age, I was 39

The tests are really just a couple of blood tests, couple of scans, nothing definitive came back on ours
I don't think they'd cost that much to have done privately

[thedicewoman]

again, to give you some hope I had a very similar set of circumstances to you before having my first baby. I got pregnant with my first about 2 months after my second miscarriage. no real reason that I could discern and I took comfort from the fact that both miscarriages were very different, e.g. anembryonic first time. I had a third miscarriage in between pregnancies but now have two healthy children. it's so hard at the time but really I think there is no point in tests if you have " only" had two as they could both be for completely different and entirely random reasons.

I'm sorry, I know from bitter experience that this doesn't help, the only thing that really helps is having a successful pregnancy, which I sincerely hope you do next time

[sugarandspite]

Thanks for your replies.

waimea that's really interesting that your gp referred you after 2 mc and makes me wonder how much flexibility there is in the 3 losses thing. Are they guidelines that can take into account individual circumstances? I'm still early 30s so have some time but a history of endometriosis which makes conceiving more tricky.

Had a brief nosey at a fertility clinic site which does mc investigations and it looks like it might be over £1700 just for a consultation and the investigations. Which if they are just a couple of blood tests and a scan is rather pricey, even for private work.

[sugarandspite]

Thanks thedice. I agree that 2 different types of miscarriage do suggest different causes - but I worry that maybe 'something' is going on at about 10-12weeks to cause the losses. Maybe the anembryonic mc would have just shown up as a missed mc at the 12wk scan but something triggered the natural miscarriage at a similar time to this latest one which did look viable.

Or maybe I'm just driving myself crazy trying to find answers where there are none.

I don't know. I just think I would cope better with another pregnancy psychologically if we were at least one step forward from where we are now. Even knowing that there wasn't any significant underlying cause would help, rather than just not knowing.

[Bakingtins]

It's worth asking your GP. We went private after 3 miscarriages but only 2 in a row, paid for a private appointment (£200) and then GP agreed to carry out most of the recommended tests. It ended up costing us about £600 for initial consultation, scan, a blood test that NHS won't cover, and an early pregnancy scan in subsequent pregnancy.
You need to know before you start that even after 3 consecutive losses they don't find anything in 50% of cases and this was the case for us. The likelihood of having 2 consecutive losses purely by chance based on a MC rate of 15% is about 2% so 1 in 50 women will have 2 miscarriages without any underlying cause other than random chromosome problems. We had another very similar loss after our tests. The only avenue open to us now is reproductive immunology which seems to be an open ended and bottomless pit in terms of potential tests and costs. We're trying to decide whether to get tested for NK cells (£350) or whether we draw a line at this point. Now we've had 3 in a row we've been referred to NHS recurrent miscarriage unit but I don't think they will have anything additional to offer us.

[sugarandspite]

That's really helpful bakingtins thank you.

Think ill make an appt to see our gp next week and have a chat about what they might be able to do for us at this stage, and also check that they would be happy to run some of the tests if we get them recommended privately.

You are of course right that it could just be bad luck, and that's fine if it is, but I would find it much easier to go into another pregnancy if we had just a bit more information than we do now.