MTHFR

No, it's not an abbreviation for motherfucker.

It's the gene mutation they FINALLY diagnosed me with to explain the clotting disorders in my family. Yes, I am no longer a medical mystery to be treated with the utmost care. I actually have a problem. Yay!

I have MTHFR with 2 mutations = compound hetero MTHFR
get smart :
Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) is the name of a gene that produces an enzyme, also called methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. this enzyme is found in the cells of our body. It is needed to metabolize (break down) homocysteine, an amino acid found in the proteins you eat. Elevated homocysteine levels have been associated with fetal neural tube defects (i.e., spinal Bifida) and miscarriage. An elevated homocysteine level can also indicate a increased risk factor for blood clots, arteriosclerosis (hardening of arteries) and strokes in both men and women. The metabolism of homocysteine depends on several enzymes, one of which is MTHFR, along with B vitamins and folic acid. In other words, B vitamins, folic acid and MTHFR are necessary to keep homocysteine levels within normal limits. When the body is deficient in methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, its ability to absorb folate (also known as vitamin B9), such as folic acid, is inhibited. Folic acid and B9 are both essential to the development and health of the fetus.
Because of a mother with MTHFR’s inability to efficiently metabolize folic acid and vitamin B9, the disorder has been linked to a variety of pregnancy complications such as chromosomal abnormalities, such as Down syndrome, and congenital malformations.
Elevated levels of homocysteine have been associated with placental disease, preeclampsia and recurrent pregnancy loss. 21% of women with high levels of homocysteine experience recurrent pregnancy loss.
SymptomsBecause MTHFR is a blood-based disease with many varieties, symptoms vary depending on the exact mutation of the disease. They can include:
blood clots
depression
anxiety

Taking folic acid can help women with certain mutations of the disease. Folic acid can be found in eggs, dark leafy vegetables, such as spinach and broccoli, oranges and orange juice and legumes, such as peas and dried beans. Vitamin supplements also contain folic acid.
maybe I should plant an orange tree!
as for the 2 mutations that i have--> compound C677T and A1298C MTHFR mutation :
If you have two copies of the same mutation, you are homozygous. Homozygotes can have elevated homocysteine levels in maternal blood and amniotic fluid.
There is NO CURE for MTHFR mutation. If you have the mutation, that's the way your body is made. You can, however, lessen any risk factors you have by taking B vitamins, Folic acid and baby aspirin in doses prescribed by your doctor. By taking these agents, you can lower your homocysteine levels and therefor your risk for the conditions above.

So for now I'm to make an apointment with a High risk OB and my next pg will be considered HIGH RISK regardless.
I'm researching the benefits of possibly going on lovenox for my next BFP but i wonder if it woul
be "overkill" as Dr. F mentioned earlier.
things that make you go hmmmmm

RPL results are in

We had our RPL testing done 2 weeks ago and got resluts today.
RPL=Recurrent pregnancy loss is defined as the loss of three or more pregnancies in a row. Yup that would be us or me i should say. Turns out I have very low folic acid levels and a blood clotting disorder.
studies have also suggested that being deficient in folic acid is associated with higher risk of early miscarriage. One 2002 study by Swedish researchers found that women with low folate levels had a significantly increased risk of having a miscarriage affected by chromosomal abnormalities. such as trisomy 16 (read previous post below)

Blood clotting disorders appear to play a role in 15% of all cases of recurrent miscarriage. Blood clotting disorders prevent the placenta from getting a proper blood supply during pregnancy, causing the fetus to die. This is often due to the presence of high levels of antiphospholipid antibodies (APA)--> special cells that are supposed to help our bodies attack foreign invaders. and anticardiolipin antibodies
If you do test high for antiphospholipid antibodies, like i did, the treatment is aimed at reducing the number of clots in your blood, and restoring blood flow to the placenta. Low-dose aspirin and the anticoagulant Heparin are often recommended.
Aspirin appears to help thin out the blood in women who are experiencing these problematic blood clots. When given in low doses, aspirin makes your blood platelets less sticky, allowing blood to travel more easily through the placenta to your baby
My numbers weren't so BAD that my doctor thinks with just the BA it should be enough, so no shots WAHOO and THANK GOD
I will have to continue P4 when i get my next BFP though just to be safe.
As for the folic acid I'm starting a prescription dose of 4mg plus the PNV!
Hey i'll pop as many pills as need and even get poked if it means finally having our baby!
I have to be thankful to the Lord for giving us answers that WE can easily fix.
And thank you to all of those who have kept us in your prayers!

Trisomy 16

This was the reason our latest pg didn't work. Nothing we could have done or didn't do would have changed what was inevitable. This genetic disorder is with the baby not the parents and its not life sustainable meaning the baby would have never survived.
Here is more specific info:
Chromosome 16 normally occurs in cells as a pair of chromosomes, one inherited from each parent. But when it comes to chromosomes, as the old saw says, anything that can go wrong, will. Pieces of the chromosome can mistakenly be duplicated, or may break off and get lost, or there can be too many copies of the entire chromosome. Below are some of the disorders of chromosome 16.
Trisomy 16Instead of the normal pair, there are three copies of chromosome 16. Trisomy 16 is estimated to occur in more than 1% of pregnancies, making it the most common trisomy in humans. Unfortunately, this also makes trisomy 16 the most common chromosomal cause of miscarriages, as the condition is not compatible with life.
Sometimes there may be three copies of chromosome 16, but not in all cells of the body (some have the normal two copies). This is called mosaicism. Symptoms of trisomy 16 mosaicism include:
poor growth of the fetus during pregnancy
congenital heart defects, such as ventricular septal defect (16% of individuals) or atrial septal defect (10% of individuals)
unusual facial features
underdeveloped lungs or respiratory tract problems
musculoskeletal anomalies
urethral opening too low (hypospadias) (7.6% of boys).
Miscarriage occurs in fifteen to 20 percent of all pregnancies, and the risk of miscarriage increases with each successive pregnancy loss. Recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) is defined as three or more consecutive miscarriages that occur prior to the ability of the fetus to survive on its own (usually twenty weeks).
Chromosomal abnormalities - Found in more the 50% of spontaneous abortions but in less than 1% of full-term newborns. The most prevalent type of genetic abnormality in abortuses is autosomal trisomy (50%), especially trisomies 16, 18 and 21 (Down syndrome). In about 5% of couples with RPL, one partner is found to have a balanced translocation (some of the genetic material from one chromosome is located on the wrong chromosome) and when this is passed on to the fetus genetic error can occur.

We are waiting now for the results of our RPL and praying that we don't have a balanced translocation which is basically a person usually has all the genetic material necessary for normal growth -- a piece of a chromosome is merely broken off and attached to another one. However, when that person's cells divide to create egg or sperm cells for reproduction, the egg or sperm cells can end up with extra genetic material or missing genetic material, which could lead to miscarriage depending on which chromosome and genes are affected
because there is no cure for balanced translocation, and in most cases, the only adverse effect on health is recurrent miscarriages. the treatment for this is usually PGD : the couple conceives via in-vitro fertilization along with gene testing of the embryos to be sure that they do not have an unbalanced translocation. PGD is very expensive, did i mention our insurance doesn't cover infertility?
yeah and also i can't got through with it even if they didn't simply because i don't believ in fertilizing eggs and the selecting the" best" to implant, to me personally that feels like i'm playing God, and although lately i don't think he even remebers who i am let alone feel his presence anywhere near me, i respect the creatin process and don't want to play with sort of speak. That said I would never knock anyone opting for this option i just personally couldn't do it.

i couldn't have worded it better

this is amazing and truly a reality of who we are who we've become and how we feel

http://www.tearsandhope.com/emptyarms_video.html

a word from the NY times

Published: October 20, 2008
written by N. West Moss

There are no pink ribbons to wear if you’ve had a miscarriage, no walkathons or T-shirts to encourage awareness and prevention. And to the extent that we have a language to talk about miscarriage, it’s full of airy platitudes: “Don’t worry, I had one once, too,” or “I had two, and then — poof — Davey was born, and he’s graduating from college this week.”
But until you belong to the imaginary club of Mothers Without Children, it is a secret planet of pain, all but invisible to the outside world.
I recently had my third miscarriage in a year. It happened early in the pregnancy, and it was dismissed as no big deal — “chemical pregnancy” seems to be the term of art. Let’s not overreact, no need for hysterics, keep moving. “We’ll treat it as though you’re just getting your period,” as my doctor put it.
But honestly, it is not just like getting your period. Psychologically, of course, it is nothing like it, but physically it is different, too. I had cramps for hours that left my ribs feeling bruised, and then four days later I was back at work and exhausted because I was still bleeding a lot — not an alarming amount, but enough to make me schedule meetings in rooms near bathrooms, and to send me home in the afternoon for a two-hour nap. I wonder how men would cope. All of the pain, mess, furtive tidying-up, shame and soldiering-on seem so fundamentally female to me.
People act as if a miscarriage were a locatable event on a calendar, with a beginning, a middle and an end. But in fact it starts when you feel that first unmistakable twinge that something is totally wrong. It continues through the rough days of sorrow and deep cramps, and then it meanders through every single day of the rest of your whole stupid life. I will probably mourn about this miscarriage in some outwardly unremarkable way until I either have a healthy baby or die.
Talking about miscarriages is so loaded and pitiful and hushed and fraught with meaning about age and usefulness. It feels as though having three miscarriages in a year means I did something wrong, when the reality is that most miscarriages take place for chromosomal reasons out of our control.
Yet a woman who has had a miscarriage has likely asked herself why. “God must not want me to have a kid,” she might think, or “I am too old.” There are moments when you can feel that the miscarriage and the calamities of the world are your own doing and you should have somehow known better.
Maybe we don’t talk about our miscarriages because we don’t want women with children looking at us with pity, or teenagers in their immortality-flushed way thinking, “That’ll never happen to me.” We do not want happy families to whisper, “Thank God that’s not us.” We don’t want to wonder if men are thinking, “If they can’t have kids, then why are they here, anyway?”
I cannot tell you, though, what you should say to women who have had miscarriages. While it can be touching to hear other women’s stories, it can also be irritating: it makes our moment of extraordinary sadness feel ordinary and unremarkable. Why would I want to hear about your miscarriage when I am lying on the floor trying to lift 500 pounds of failure, disappointment and crashing hormones off my chest?
I can tell you that I want people to know. I don’t want it to be a secret or a shadow or something that is endured only alone. I want people to know that I have been through something, that I am tired but optimistic, that I’ve been knocked down but don’t help me up because I can get up myself.
It’s fair, I think, to want witnesses for our suffering. But with the sorrow also comes hope. And after all, we are resilient creatures. A friend of mine said it well in an e-mail message after she heard my news. “I hope you don’t give up,” she wrote. “I want to take a picture of your child one day against the tallest sunflower.”

Light a candle with us

Tomorrow we will be lighting 3 candles, one for each of our angels that now watch over us. Its easy to forget and get caught up in our lives, but not one day goes by that i don't think of them. how they would be or how far along I should be.
It hard and its pain that will never go away, a piece of my soul has been torn from me and will never be healed or replaced.
This is my way to let friends and family kow that just because we dn't give birth doesn't mean it hurts any less, with each positive test dreams were slowly starting to become a reality, we had plans made, names picked out, where the crib would go, would we find out the sex, where would we have the shower and of course delivery time. Then in the blink of an eye it was taken from us. our dream all too soon became a nightmare and one from where we just can't seem to wake up and even worse it keeps repeating itself over and over.
We have lost 3 babies and we will never ever forget how much they touched our lives and I hope they now how much we adored them every second they were with us!

http://www.october15th.com

If i owened a restaurant

I would totally hire lafayette to be the manager, some people come in and can be total Assholes about evrything and this is how they should be handled:

Live as if you were to die tomrrow...learn as if you were to live forever

For some time many of us havewondered just who is Jack Schitt? Wefind ourselves at a loss when someonesays, "You don't know Jack Schitt!"Well, thanks to my genealogy efforts,you can now respond in an intellectual way.Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt.Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, marriedO. Schitt, the owner of Needeep N. Schitt, Inc.They had one son, Jack.In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt.The deeply religious couple producedsix children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt,Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twinsDeap Schitt and Dip Schitt. Against herparents' objections, Deap Schitt marriedDumb Schitt, a high school dropout.After being married 15 years, Jack andNoe Schitt divorced. Noe Schitt latermarried Ted Sherlock, and, because herkids were living with them, she wanted tokeep her previous name. She was then knownas Noe Schitt Sherlock.Meanwhile, Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt,and they produced a son with a rathernervous disposition named Chicken Schitt.Two of the other six children, Fulla Schittand Giva Schitt, were inseparable throughoutchildhood and subsequently married theHappens brothers in a dual ceremony.The wedding announcement in the newspaperannounced the Schitt-Happens nuptials.The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg,Byrd, and Hoarse. Bull Schitt, the prodigalson, left home to tour the world. He recentlyreturned from Italy with his new Italian bride, PisaSchitt.Now, when someone says, "You don't know Jack Schitt,"you can correct them,And say I know all the about Schitt's

TCCAL mantras

Even though we are not TTC yet...(yes i am crazy enough to want to keep trying and hopefully getting it right at some point)
I figured these would be good to have for now until I get there.

Waiting to “O”
- The only thing that I can really do is have a lot of sex.
- When in doubt FLB
2WW
- I’m pg until AF tells me I’m not.
- It’s not over ‘til AF shows.
AF shows
- Might not be this time, but there is a baby waiting for the perfect moment to be with me.
Whole cycle
- Yes! I WILL get pg again!!
- My desire to have a baby is greater then my fear of having another miscarriage.

My new athem

I forgot to mention I was driving home the other night crying, and this song came on and although i never heard the lyrics it hit right home that moment, this is where i am right now in my life. at first i wanted to aim this at GOD but i honestly don't believe he is doing this to me, and sometimes i feel like he has completely forgotten about me I look at my 7y/o miracle and thank him for blessing me with him. Whatever frces or whatnot IS responsible for doing this...this is for them! basically a F*ck YOU!
the lyrics below are what got to me the most! enjoy
BTW don't forget to pause the player below BEFORE you play this!





So i'm gonna drink my money
I got a brand new attitude
And i'm gonna wear it tonight
I wanna get in trouble I wanna start a fight
Na Na Na Na Na Na Na
I wanna start a fight
Na Na Na Na Na Na Na
I wanna start a fight
So so what? I'm still a rock star
I got my rock moves
And i don't need you
And guess what I'm having more fun
And now that we're done
I'm gonna show you tonight I'm alright, I'm just fine
And you're a tool
So so what?
I am a rockstar
I got my rock moves
And i don't want you tonight

You weren't there
You never were
You weren't all
But thats not fair
I gave you life I gave my all
You weren't there
You let me fall So so what?

Its over and done with

Well surgery was a success i suppose on Monday...hey i'm still alive right!
Anyway, going through this for a third time besides being totally unfair, its completely devastated me and just ripped out my want to be a mother again. I don't know that i ever want to TTC again, Michael? well he wants to wait to see what the report(aka baby's autopsy) will tell us. uhmm yeah how about nothing! my body for whatever reason just doesn't want to handle a pg again. I'm so over it over the trying and planning and being careful not to eat this or drink that because of what harm it may do...guess what been there done that i still have no baby to show for it! 3 babies lost regardless of how careful i was and how many vitamins and precautions i took, i still lost them!
What difference does it make?
I told Michael that we need to each write a list of 5 places we want to go see and them put them in a box and each December we pull out a paper and that is our next destination vacation for the following summer!
first off Italy! then Costa Rica together finally. I figure if I'm not gonna focus my attention on baby making and producing which I've managed to very successfully fail, then besides nursing school i will put all my energy into vacation planning!
Right now I'm trying to convince Michael to go to Disney again next Sept and take advantage of the free dining! I love Disney and i love food so what better combo OHHH and it will be full blown summer not cold like when we got in January!
Well that is my big update for the week.
ta da for now