Digging into research

Obviously after two horrible losses like this, it left me a little less than wanting to move forward with anything in life. Luckily having Kaelyn brigtened each day for me, and gave me a reason to get out of bed. The only other thing I was motivated to do was research. I looked everywhere. I looked into recurrent pregnancy loss, I looked into infertility, I researched triploidy (the reason for the first miscarriage) and so much more. To make this very simple, there were two conclusions I came to from my research:
1. Do everything I can to find an answer for my miscarriages (rather than just "rolling the dice again" like the doc suggested), and
2: Think about our health in a more holistic way (change everything about the way we eat and rethink the type of "consumer" we are).

So first I had the doctor do a "recurrent pregnancy loss panel" - this consisted of twelve viles of blood and tested for the following factors:
-Hemoglobin A1C
-TSH
-Lupus Anticoagulant
-Cardiolipin Antibody Screen with Reflex to IgG and IgM
-Protein C Antigen
-Protein S Antigen
-Leiden Factor V
-Homocysteine
-MTHFR
-Prothrombin Gene Mutation
-Chromosome Analysis

Here's a site that gives information on the possible tests: http://www.fertilityplus.org/faq/miscarriage/rpl.html

I also had her write up lab slips for hormone tests (estradial and progesterone) to take at the appropriate times in my cycle.

I also made an appointment with an accupuncturist, a holistic doctor (a holistic doctor incorporates nutrition into his/her medical practice), a geneticist, a perinatologist, and started looking into reproductive endocrinology, immunologists, and fertility specialists.

It became clear very quickly that this was not an easy or short road ahead. The easy road is to just try again - as your OB will tell you to do. There aren't easy answers and miscarriage is generally under-researched. Digging deep isn't generally supported, and HMO's won't allow you to investigate anything until you've lost at least 3 pregnancies. From this standpoint, I'm very lucky to have the information I already have. But no one seems to know what to do with it until you go to a more alternative doctor. Dr Beer is an amazing doctor, tho controversial, but just proves how paying more attention and being open to alternative thoughts can give people not only hope, but healthy babies!! http://repro-med.net/tests/tests.php

I did, however, find so much helpful and hopeful information about positive changes we could make ourselves by simply changing the way we eat. No matter what I read, whether in regards to miscarriage, infertility, cancer, autism, scoriacis, menopause, aging, heart issues, you name it... the same diet was always recommended: avoid acidic foods....no meat, no dairy, no processed flours or refined sugars, eat high alkaline foods...only eat vegetables, fruits, nuts, soy, water, and seeds. Yikes. Turns out, we can prevent all illnesses with just eating the right foods. The American diet is FAR from eating the right foods. More on this later, but I started coming up with a plan for changing our diet. I didn't want to become a vegetarian or a vegan and I certainly didn't want to complicate our life, but one simple rule was what made it easy to change how we ate: look at your plate. It should be 60-70% vegetables at all meals.