Test Results and What's Next

Kyle and I had our follow-up appointment yesterday to review the results of the testing on the baby and tissue. I wasn't expecting them to find anything wrong with the baby. I assumed we would need to start doing testing to find out what was wrong with me. I did so much reading on all the possible reasons for recurrent pregnancy loss (see a good summary here) and I was prepared to search for a reason for our losses. I figured it would be a problem with my uterus or a blood clotting issue (antiphospholipid syndrome). In fact, I had even found one article that mentioned a link between Crohn's and antiphospholipid syndrome. We were hoping it would be the blood clotting because it's easily treatable by taking baby aspirin and heparin throughout your next pregnancy.

It turns out that it wasn't any of those things. The testing actually found that the baby had Turner's Syndrome. It's a random abnormality that accounts for 10% of all spontaneous miscarriages. All babies with Turner's are girls and it's rare for one to survive, although there are women who have Turner's Syndrome. Also, we have no increased risk of it happening another time because it is a random event. You can read more about it here and here.

So although we don't know what caused the first miscarriage, we know that the second one was just bad luck. And with regard to the blood clotting, it turns out that my Doctor had already run those tests each time I was pregnant just to be safe. (Which makes me even more confident that my Doctor knows what he's doing.)

Based on all of that information, we were advised that once we're emotionally ready, we can start trying again. Now that we know the second miscarriage was just bad luck, the statistical risk of our having another miscarriage in our next pregnancy is more like 12-20% (the same rate as any normal couple our age who gets pregnant) rather than 40-49%.

At first Kyle and I were unsure how we felt about the diagnosis. We were expecting to find something wrong that we could fix. Being told nothing is wrong is good news, but it's scary to try again without doing anything different. So overall we're happy with the results and praying for good news next time.

Update: I forgot to mention that we don't have a name for the baby yet, but we do plan on giving her a name just like Devon. I'm running out of girl baby names that I like so I want to think about it a while longer. ;)