When Your Worst Fears are Confirmed

If you’re a regular follower of our blog you may have read about out how we were told last week that we had experienced another miscarriage (based on the lack of heartbeat visible at our 7-week scan).

At that point, I found it very difficult to believe we had experienced another miscarriage.

My morning sickness was quite bad and became much worse in the days following the scan.

I hadn’t noticed any signs of impending miscarriage and although I can’t say I didn’t believe what the Doctors were saying, I just found it difficult to believe based on what I was experiencing.

We pressed for a follow-up scan the following week and felt comfortable enough to wait until then to decide what to do.

We weren’t exactly expecting a miracle at the follow-up scan, but we hoped it would give us some comfort to know we had made the right decision to go through with a D&C procedure.

Unfortunately, the scan revealed the worst (measurement of the embryo was much smaller than the week previous and the Doctor didn’t say this, but it looked to me like it had started to disintegrate to some extent – we definitely weren’t able to make out the embryo or yolk sac as easily as we could the week before).

So, nonetheless, we started getting prepared for a D&C later this week.

Even though waiting can be a bit stressful, I’m glad we had the second scan. It gave us both peace of mind that having the D&C was the best path for us at this point.

In terms of next steps, our OB has offered to have the tissue tested (to hopefully determine the cause of miscarriage) and following that he will do some tests to find out if there is something causing them to happen.

I also spoke to my OB about a little hunch I have – a few years back I had surgery for another completely unrelated problem and following that it took months for my wound to heal (prior to that I’d had another surgery and my wound never healed properly, it opened up over and over again for about 3 years which prompted me to press for a second surgery).

After trying just about everything under the sun, my surgeon suggested I take a course of Zinc. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I did that for a month and funnily enough, the wound healed up and I’ve never had a problem with it since.

I have wondered since then if I have some kind of zinc deficiency. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t worry about it because it doesn’t seem to affect my day to day life, but just out of interest I did a quick search to see if there is any link between zinc levels and miscarriage.

Interestingly, it appears there has been some research into this area, and apparently, there was one study conducted which compared the vitamin and mineral levels of ladies who were pregnant with the outcome of their pregnancies. Out of the group studied, those who experienced miscarriages were all found to be deficient in both zinc and copper.

There were also a few interesting studies of cows, rats, and mice which found a greater likelihood of miscarriage in those with low zinc levels.

I also found a few other sources mentioning links between zinc and selenium levels and chromosomal abnormalities associated with miscarriage – all very interesting (note there’s not a lot of research on any of this, so any of these findings could just be coincidence).

I mentioned this to my OB – he thought it was quite humorous that I would suggest something so ridiculous, but I pressed on anyway and came to the conclusion that since a supplement isn’t going to hurt anything (except perhaps his credibility if it works – his words, not mine) I think I will give it a go all the same.

I’m interested to know if anyone else has ever heard anything like this before?

I’m not a Doctor in any way, shape or form, so please don’t take on board anything I’ve said here as something that could work for you if you’re in a similar situation to me. I’m merely interested in this possibility and wondering if anyone has heard of it before, or if someone has tried it and it’s worked for them?

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.