What I seek to know is how long to wait after miscarriage before we need to focus on conceiving again? I mean, how hard can it be to take a little break from the whole fertility topic?
Pretty damn hard if you have a post miscarriage check-up scheduled in which your gynecologist wants to discuss your fertility planning.
Originally I thought, I have to be there anyway so what’s a twenty minute fertility chat?
Oh, the ramifications.
Getting the Answers to ‘How Long to Wait After Miscarriage?’
I was on the ever so comfortable chair with my feet in the air looking at an ultrasound image hanging from the ceiling.
She was maneuvering the wand around to get a look at my ovaries, my uterus, and my notorious fallopian tubes when she noticed that my left fallopian tube was slightly swollen. Not that I could identify it on the monitor, but she went on to explain that this could be the remnants of an ectopic pregnancy that my body is still recovering from. And then she opened the conversation, “You need to give your body a chance to heal before you begin trying again to conceive.”
I could see she thought she was going to meet some resistance from me, but I already knew we had to wait out this cycle – no big deal.
Not quite!
She stopped looking at the ultrasound monitor, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “You need to wait three months before trying again.”
I protested immediately.
“What? That seems extreme. That’s how long we waited after my ectopic pregnancy surgery and this is certainly much less for my body to recover from.”
She went on to explain that my body needs one normal healthy cycle before we begin trying again. “The current cycle is your miscarriage cycle, the next one isn’t going to be normal so after the third cycle you can try again,” she said with a stern compassion.
Given my long cycles though, it could be June before we can try again to conceive!
She could tell: I was not on the same page.
My Fallopian Tubes
After a little more explaining she moved right on to the next topic. My fallopian tubes. She said it would be pointless to keep trying if in-fact my tubes are blocked or compromised, and recommended that I have them checked to see if they are clear.
Oh boy. Now, I’m really not with her. Not on a different page – I’m in an entirely different book!
I already had my tubes checked (a few months before I had my ectopic pregnancy, actually) and they came out clear. So while the surgery could have created a blocked right tube, it does not seem like the test is any indication that they are going to function properly. I supposed if it turned up that both my tubes were blocked it would be good to know, but I had just become pregnant so, obviously, they’re not.
Fertility with IVF??
I started to get up and she asked me when my last breast exam was. With this infertility issue dominating my visits I had to say I couldn’t remember so I moved over to the table and she began the breast exam and continued the fertility planning conversation. Oh, joy.
She got right to the point, “You need to think about how long you are going to try on your own. I would give it six months and then consider going right to IVF.”
This hit me like a ton of bricks. Basically, she’s not rooting for my body anymore; she thinks it’s time to jump ship. So to emphasize her point she then added what no one with infertility likes to hear, “The clock is ticking.”
I hate to be so critical because, if my gynecologist isn’t going to be frank and inform me about the factors influencing my fertility then who will? The thing is: I already know all this information.
I’m what one might call over-informed. I know the role age plays in my fertility and that IVF works best before age 35. I know that the more miscarriages I have the more bleak the statistics look for me. But – and this is a big but – if I’m listening to my body and making lifestyle changes and doing therapies that cause positive changes in my body then I feel there’s still a chance.
So until the progress plateaus: I won’t be turning to invasive methods.
‘How Long to Wait After Miscarriage?’ … Mmm Not Long!
Before I was even out of the building I called my husband, “I need lots of hugs and some soul food.”
We cooked up some fajitas – with extra guacamole and without the shells. And I got lots of hugs. But it was inevitable; we talked about our fertility planning.
I couldn’t stuff my feelings and frustration away. One thing became clear; we don’t plan on waiting a full three cycles until we try again. We plan on waiting one full cycle after my miscarriage cycle. I don’t think my body needs three cycles and I know too many women that have had their first healthy child immediately after a miscarriage – one of these women is my mother.
Well, so much for that break from the infertility topic and thank god for hugs and fajitas.