hello,
This is my first post although i have been lurking for a while and have been following many of your ttc journies
I have had 3 miscarriages since feb 08.
I have been told to start the progesterone (cyclogest pessaries) cd 10 until cd 25. I am a little confused! I thought that cyclogest should be started after ovulation, not before? I ahve contacted my gyne but he is always busy and i cannot see him again until jan 09!!
Does anyone have any advice on this? i dont want to ruin my chances of conceiving again. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Sorry again for going on about me me me! i wont do it again, i promise
Last edited by don23; November 14th, 2008 at 01:38 AM.
Welcome to BB. So sorry to hear of your losses, its such a sad situation
I do not know all that much about progesterone levels, but there is another BB member who had troubles with this (and has just recently given birth to her baby girl ).
Try searching through some of the threads here, I am sure you will find some info ..... hopefuly the other member will be able to come along and give you some more info.....
First of all, I am so very sorry for your losses, big Don't worry about going on about yourself, that is what we are here for!
I have been taking progesterone pessaries as part of my fertility treatment not for miscarriage (even though I have had 2, maybe 3 ) but I would imagine that things are the same regardless of why you are taking it. My clinic start me on it 1 day post ovulation, they said that if you start it before O that it can make the endometrial lining less receptive to an embryo if there is one. So yes you are right. I have cycle tracking (bloods and ultrasound) to monitor when O occurs so I know when to start the prog. I don't really know what I would do in your situation, maybe BBT so you know when O has occurred and start them once you see a temp rise? Or test with OPKs and start the prog a couple of days after you see a pos?? Sorry I can't really be much more helpful that that, but I hope some of this helps you. Can you at least talk to your ob on the phone about it all? My FS is available by phone whenever I need him.
thank you both for your help
It makes me so mad that my gyno would give me the wrong info. He is supposed to be the expert I have tried several times to speak to him but i am always told he is busy/in a meeting! All i need is 20 seconds of his time. Very frustrating. It took 4 weeks for his secretary to ask him when i should be taking the progesterone
I have never BBT or used OPKs but i think i will try the OPKs as at least they will give me a better idea of when i ovulate. My cycles before the miscarriages were always 27 days but are now 24-25 days so im not really sure when ovulation occurs. Do you know which brand is best?
It makes me so mad that the gyno has given me the wrong istructions!! He is supposed to be the expert I have tried to speak to him several times, all i get is 'he is too busy seeing patients' or 'he is in a meeting'. It took 4 weeks for him to answer my question of when should i take the progesterone!
I have never BBT or used OPKs but i think i may try the OPKs for a couple of cycles to give me a better idea of when i ovulate as at the moment it is pure guess work (i always check cm but it is not always very clear). Before the miscarriages my cycles were always 27 days but now they are 22-24 days which confuses me even more. Do you know which brand of OPKs are best?
I can't answer your question but just wanted to drop by & offer some encouragement. I too had 3 m/c's before my successful birth. I'd had a lot of testing done over the years because of infertility & nothing was ever found to be wrong. I was never given a reason for my losses as they were all early ones. For me it was a case of 4th time lucky without any medical assistance. I hope it's 4th time lucky for you too.
Satya - thank u for your words of encouragement I often feel like i am never going to be able to carry a pregnancy to term (especially when doctors etc are unwilling to help/support me) but hearing success stories like yours gives me hope.
Congratulations on your successful birth. I hope all is going well
I will cut a long story short. This is not advice. This is just my story.
I fell pregnant after 9 months of trying. I was 36. At 11 1/2 week I lost the baby. After another 9 months I fell pregnant again. This was eptopic and again I lost the baby. I went to a fertility doctor. Clomid - nothing. Injected hormones into my stomach - nothing. I then started assisted conception. I was still injecting hormones into my stomach, being scanned and my eggs measured, then receiving an injection to release the eggs and then I was getting assisted conception (you've heard the story's of the turkey baster). Anyway I fell pregnant the first time. Lasted for 7 weeks. Left it a month, repeated the whole process, fell pregnant again. Lasted 8 weeks. By this time when I got a positive pregnancy test instead of being over the moon like most people, my husband and I would think "how long's this going to last".
My girlfriend told me about asprin. She to had my miscarriages (now got three kids). I told my fertility doctor about it. He said "There is no scientific proof that asprin works and in fact could be dangerous". I was desperate so I went on Astrix which is 100mg of asprin (asprin is 300mg). Went through the whole process again in January, fell pregnant, waited for 7 weeks. No miscarriage. I had a beautiful, healthy baby boy. I told my gyno I was on Astrix. He said to stop taking it at 38 weeks. He didn't seem surprised or anxious about it. When my son was six months I started to try again naturally (thinking if nothing worked I would go back to my fertility doctor). I started Folic Acid and Astrix. Fell pregnant straight away and had a beautiful healthy daughter. My friend on IVF also took Astrix after many failed attempts and had twins.
I I took 1 Astrix tablet every day I was pregnant and quite after 38 weeks. My gyno knew I was on it. I am not giving your advice. I am just telling you my story.
Sweeting I am so sorry about your losses - it casts a small shadow on your heart each time and is always challenging to accept and work out how the feeling can become a healthy part of your emotional landscape. My m/c was at 9 weeks in Sept but I am blessed to have a little daughter 3 who was conceived naturally at 35 and homebirthed at 36.
But to the progesterone - I have done and am doing a huge amount of personal (I am not a doctor, natural therapist or fertility specialist - just someone trying to be safe and rational in my approach) research constantly on hormones (I am 39) as it is an immensely relevant part of my preconception prep and I tend to find, as you have, that there is a lot of contradiction out there.
The one thing that medical and natural practitioners seem to agree on with the use of progesterone (in my case - I am using a transdermal natural progesterone cream - not the 'wild yam' (scam) creams and fairly high potency - but the choice is always an individual one) - is that progesterone appears to be of most use in terms of defective luteal phases in women as a support tool in conception rather than as a maintainer of pregnancy (so there is some argument about how effective it really is in maintaining a pregnancy that may not be viable). There seems to be some argument against the synthetic forms in terms of adverse side effects. Aspirin is not an option for me as I am intolerant of it!!
The general consensus of what people have said here about trying to take it post-ovulation seems supported by a lot of the readings I've done - the advice I've had is to start at day 12 and go to day 26 of cycle - day 12 seems to be favoured because it does take a little while for the fat absorbant properties of the progesterone to take effect and the egg needs to meet a good uterine environment so it seems you may need to lay a little progesterone groundwork before the egg sets up residence. I have teamed a uterine tonic (my naturapath puts this together for me) to support a healthy egg and good ovulatory state to start with (taken just before period rocks up and during the period) and then I use the progesterone to support the luteal phase as I have a short one (I ovulate at the right time but my period kicks in at 24-26 days - a little too short). I used this approach with my first pregnancy and we had just started trying again this year when this second pregnancy took but did not remain with us.
One interesting point that did appear in several sources was the need to take care with high dose saturation with progesterone (particularly if the site of application was constantly the same or unvaried) as some medical and natural therapies sources seem to suggest that this saturation might actually interfere with the body's own progesterone receptors and could adversely influence them i.e. they could 'turn' off or produce less instead of being stimulated . I have to constantly alter the site every time I apply my transdermal cream and I have to target areas of high circulation rather than obvious fatty tissue given the progesterone's tendency to saturate fatty tissue (you can see why many medical practitioners might target pessaries for high circulation!!!)
Where I'm going next at the moment is to try a saliva test for hormones to ascertain where I have come back to after the m/c. I have also since then given up 1 1/2 jobs as I was totally overstressing my adrenals and exhausted adrenals do not support progesterone production (I still teach 0.6 for a crust) - and I must admit I feel much better in myself and a lot less tired (sleep allergic three year old, very active was making the mix too interesting I think!)
So - I am no expert - but like many people trying to create good health and support their fertility to the best of their ability I keep seeking out information and research from both medical and natural therapies arenas with an open mind and a lot of hope and this is what I have found at this point. I am not sure if anything here is of help but there may be some leads of use for you to investigate more if they seem useful.
Sticky vibes to you!
BFN
Karen
Last edited by Karen van; November 22nd, 2008 at 02:42 PM.
: Just noticed ticker is still attached after m/c
taking progesterone after 3 miscarriages?
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).
) but I would imagine that things are the same regardless of why you are taking it. My clinic start me on it 1 day post ovulation, they said that if you start it before O that it can make the endometrial lining less receptive to an embryo if there is one. So yes you are right. I have cycle tracking (bloods and ultrasound) to monitor when O occurs so I know when to start the prog. I don't really know what I would do in your situation, maybe BBT so you know when O has occurred and start them once you see a temp rise? Or test with OPKs and start the prog a couple of days after you see a pos?? Sorry I can't really be much more helpful that that, but I hope some of this helps you. Can you at least talk to your ob on the phone about it all? My FS is available by phone whenever I need him.
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