So I had the results back from my blood tests checking for blood clotting issues and thyroid problems and they are all clear. Which is good, but no further along in finding a reason for my miscarriages.

I now need to book in for a progesterone test and will be able to do that in the next week or so as my period has started again – smack bang in the middle of a work trip to Malta when I also got floored by a flu virus. Great timing on both counts.

I’ve started using Ovulation Predictor Kits (OPK) again and today showed a flashing smiley face so it looks like I’ll ovulate soon. The new tests give you more options for fertile days with a smiley face that flashes leading up to your peak day, and then a static smiley face when you are at ‘optimum fertility’. To be honest, having more scope can give you more to worry about as, in my case, sometimes the smiley face never stops flashing and then you get all confused about whether you have actually ovulated. I think I’ll go back to the simpler ones with either a static smiley face or a blank circle – sometimes too many emoticons are a bad thing!

On another optimistic note, it was interesting to see on the news today, on International Women’s Day’, that the research being undertaken by Siobhan Quenby at the University of Warwick seems to moving forward. She has been investigating the issue of poor endometrial lining in the womb causing recurrent miscarriage and it has been discovered that this is down to a lack of stem cells in certain cases.

The charity Tommy’s have provided funded to Siobhan and her team to carry out more research for two trials; one to see if scratching the lining of the womb before trying to get pregnant helps to prevent miscarriage by accelerating the body’s stem cell recruitment and one to repurpose a drug currently used for Type 2 Diabetes, one of the side effects of which is an increase in stem cell recruitment. It’s great news, both for progress in the field and for getting the issue taken more seriously.

You can find more on this here and here.

In April, Tommy’s will be opening the largest early miscarriage clinic in Europe, which the Univeristy of Warwick is a part of. Such a positive step and more on that in a future post.

Image from Pixabay