Push for answers… follow your gut
TLDR - 32f &30m - trying for a year and a half. 2 miscarriages- one was blighted ovum with d&c and the second was natural at 6 weeks.
I am writing here because a few weeks ago someone’s post inspired me to get more testing and to push my drs so I did and I hope if I write here today maybe someone does the same.
After first Mc I went to Mexico (I’m from Mexico) and saw a epigenetics dr - he took some hair and ran some tests. I wasn’t very sure abt it but my mom friend went and loved him so was like why not… it just happened that when the results came back I was pregnant my second time but his advice without being pregnant was to do a set of antibiotics and dewormer and he gave me a list of food I’m sensitive to specially gluten and barley. A week after I miscarried and I decided to go gluten free and basically also not eat any of the foods he said and first it was like “yeah I’ll try a little” I wasn’t super disciplined. Then abt 2 weeks later I was like you know if I’m doing this I’m gonna do it 100% so I stopped gluten all together. 2 weeks later I realized I was not in so much muscle ache. For reference for years now every other day I would wake up like if I got hit by a truck literally my whole body aching. I never thought of it much I thought it was my neck which I do have a bad neck because of an accident. But I realized that not eating gluten was helping with the pain.
Ok this is the part of the story that’s most important - I went around this time to see a RE and I told her about this symptoms and she was like yeah no that’s not affecting it. I’m no dr so I believed her. Started reading the book fertility formula and around that time someone here posted something that made me think I need to dig more. So I said fuck it got apt with my PcP and an allergist - I went to both and both said my symptoms def are triggered by gluten and that if def can be related to fertility. Both drs sent a bunch of tests and I’m still waiting for a few results but they are coming back and I have clear inflammation markers and my rheumatoid factor is elevated. The results are not fully back so I’m not sure about the protocol yet. But I think that if it wasn’t for that person on Reddit I wouldn’t have pushed to get more answers if I’m honest I didn’t wanna spend the money, bother to go the dr, and I just was like well it’s just pain whatever it went away… but now that I’m getting answers I feel like I’m not crazy, I have so many emotions. If I had just listened to my RE I wouldn’t have known and who knows how long it would take extra to conceive. Also I have never in my whole adult life felt better than how I feel now since I have stoped eating gluten. Oh and also I recently did the antibiotics and dewormer and during it I felt awful but a few days later is when I for the first time in years felt no pain at all.
Please check with your drs about anything that you know in your gut might be affecting. We live in one body and things are connected. So advocate for yourself.
Last part I’ll add is my husbands side - I told my RE that I believe my husbands marathon training was affecting us. This is based on the fact that both pregnancies happened when he stoped training and a very noticeable increase in libido when he stoped training. The dr was like yeah I don’t think that that’s it but I still ask for a dna fragmentation test and they came back borderline. Look there is absolutely no way to prove this but my husband and I really suspect this was affecting us we now know he was not eating enough so he was in a calorie deficit and the body naturally does less sperm when this happens. Also we know that training that hard cause inflammation and we also know that his balls could get hot … so again this is no science just gut feeling but he has stoped training, he is very good about his calorie intake when he does workout hard and he got cotton only underwear for workouts.
We are still very much in the thick of it and we don’t know what the future holds but for the first time in this entire journey we feel healthy and good about our potential chances.