lwheelr
Lovin' The Homestead
I think I miscarried again about three days ago.
I also think I am still pregnant.
It is unusual, but not unheard of, to get pregnant with more than one baby, and miscarry one, but not the other (my mother did this, and so did her mother, and several friends of mine). I KNOW I ovulated more than once this cycle, several days apart (that is also pretty common in older women, and I've been doing that a lot recently), so there is some logic here, not just wishful thinking. Pregnancy symptoms mostly disappeared before the miscarriage started, but are now coming back, including nausea, sore breasts, uterine ligament pain, etc.
Right now, I feel so worn out, like there is a huge vacuum attached to my energy and nutritional reserves. I need some suggestions on how to address this because if I can't find more ways to deal with it, I'll lose this baby too.
Four major complicating limitations on this:
1. I CAN'T take any additional refined supplements (they cause too many other problems). I have to do this with food.
2. There are a lot of types of food I can't break down, so I need some creative ideas to work with the ones I can break down.
3. Financial resources are limited - so I need to do it as frugally as possible. I also live in a COLD climate right now, and we are in the process of preparing to move.
4. Doctors WON'T help me. They don't know how except with meds that are so terrible I don't want to take them (and which will kill a baby), and they only diagnose and treat Crohn's when it is in the end stages, and I've controlled mine so well they can't identify it because I have very little bowel pain now, and doctors do not recognize the malabsorption syndromes that accompany it until after you have surgery to remove part of your bowel, even though the malabsorption is often worse before surgery than after. Blood tests do not show accurate nutrient levels either, nor can they measure the reserves in the body, and they don't measure whether your body actually RELEASES reserves or hoards them.
First, some history...
I have Crohn's Disease. This means I have malabsorption from two causes:
1. I don't break some foods up enough to extract the nutrients from them.
2. I may not absorb nutrients once they ARE broken down. I absorb nutrients best from natural foods, they are just more absorbable, IF I can break the food down sufficiently.
A little over eight years ago, my husband and I decided we were ready to have another baby. Our youngest was six years old at the time. Normally I'd get pregnant, miscarry, then get pregnant and carry to term (did not know at the time, but this is a classic pattern for auto-immune miscarriage, which often accompanies Crohn's). Anyway, I expected that again, so was not unduly distressed over the first miscarriage, or even the second. But this time it was different.
I miscarried every cycle for 18 months, with the losses getting earlier and earlier each time, until I was an average of 1 week late each time.
I know within 24 hours of conception that I am pregnant. My body tells me that very quickly. I've had enough kids, I should know. I could feel the pregnancy kick in, then I'd feel the symptoms disappear, and then I'd have a late, very heavy, period. The OB who diagnosed the auto-immune miscarriages said that is typical for them.
We finally had one stick. I carried her to term, and she died in my arms 18 minutes after her birth, due to a fatal genetic disorder. We have wanted another child ever since, because ending without a child to raise just doesn't seem right to us.
That was almost six years ago, and I've been miscarrying ever since. Recently I began some natural treatments for the Crohn's, and the pregnancies have been lasting a day or so longer each time, but still not very long. Not long enough to suck anything out of me like this one is doing.
The usual pattern of auto-immune disease with pregnancy is that when you first get pregnant, the auto-immune disease gets worse, as the immune system gets hyper-sensitive because of the pregnancy. But later, as the pregnancy hormones and growth factors kick in, the auto-immune disease usually gets better. So if I can make it to about three months, I should be able to consistently improve from there (this happened with my pregnancy with Sidney).
When you have had Crohn's for a long time, you tend to slowly use up your reserves, and you can get into a situation where you are deficient in some key nutrients - most commonly B-12, B-6, Folic Acid, Magnesium, and sometimes A, D, and Calcium. When you try to exercise, your body thinks it is starving, so it WITHDRAWS nutrients, rather than releasing them. This makes you STOP, because it HURTS. The muscles ache to the point where you simply cannot continue, they have no support to keep moving.
This used to happen to me all the time, but after starting the natural treatment last summer, it stopped doing that.
For the last two days, it is back, only it is really bad. If I am up walking around for even two or three minutes I start hurting. My hip and thigh muscles just starve out really fast.
I'm pretty sure this is happening because this time the baby is implanted solidly enough that it has thrown my body into crisis mode again, and it is just refusing to release nutrients. I seem to do better if I eat right before I get up and move around - that is a longstanding trick used with exercise too, it seems to trick the body into letting go of some, in the face of plenty.
The other problem is that I am VERY hungry at times that I usually am not, and I'm having symptoms of specific deficiencies every few hours - I can't seem to eat enough squash, drink enough milk, or get enough meat to satisfy the increasing need for Vitamin A, B-12, and Protein and B-6 (those are some of the only foods that I seem to get those nutrients from). I am waking up in the night with cramping stomach aches from hunger, and waking up that way in the morning also. If I go more than two hours between meals, I am getting those belly aches either - and they are very definitely hunger pain.
I don't seem to digest milk protein very well right now. I do well with protein from elk, Muscovy, rabbit, and deer. I can't seem to get much at all out of beef, chicken, or antelope (which I don't mind at all since I can't stand antelope anyway).
So I need to come up with some creative ways to get more of the following nutrients, or to be able to absorb them more easily:
1. B-6 - I'm not absorbing this well right now, and I'm not breaking it down out of foods well either. Acidophilous helps a little with this, but not enough. This is a critical nutrient, because it is a key in using other nutrients, and in getting the body to release and use stored nutrients.
2. B-12 - I can't take supplements for this. I get it out of Bantam eggs really well, and could from Quail eggs too, but don't have either of those at the moment. I don't digest larger regular sized chicken eggs very well.
3. Vitamin A - I can get this from mango, squash and cooked carrots, but I'm eating WAY too much of them. I don't have room in my diet for the carbs from the squash and mango, and if I eat too many carrots I just don't digest them.
4. Potassium - I can get a little from bananas and a fair amount from avocados, but I can't eat more than one banana a day, and I can't afford very many organic avocados!
5. Calcium - I don't seem to be absorbing this except from goat's milk, and a little with acidophilous. But I'm drinking 8 or more glasses of milk a day and still having deficiency symptoms.
6. Folic Acid - I don't seem to absorb this from many foods right now. I do take a supplement, but am not absorbing that very well either.
I know when I am low on some of these, because I get specific symptoms - heart palpitations, nerve pain, disordered thought patterns, dizziness, fatigue, etc. It stays around until I manage to get a form of food or supplement that has it, and then it resolves. The pattern has been very clear for many years, so I'm not just assuming here, I can duplicate the symptom and response pattern.
So, I need brainstorm ideas to figure out if there are more nutrient dense foods I am not thinking of for sources of some of these - easily digestible foods are best. Also, whether there are things I can do to enhance the digestion and absorption of the existing foods. And third, whether there are things I can do to further heal my bowel while my body adjusts hormonally, until things improve because of the pregnancy.
I can't use refined foods, or anything with preservatives or chemicals of any kind.
I can grow alfalfa sprouts, I do use wheatgrass. I am eating fresh spinach, romaine, zucchini, cabbage (cooked - can't eat it raw), apples, bananas, dried mangoes, cooked carrots (can't have those raw either), elk meat, rabbit meat, a small amount of goat milk (our goats are almost dried up), and lactose free organic cow's milk (the only other kind I can tolerate at all), plus homemade fermented dough breads.
I don't eat canned foods, or processed foods, because they either don't have enough in them to bother with that I can digest, or they have things in them that hurt me.
I want this baby to live. It is the first one in a long time that was still alive more than a few days past implantation.
I also think I am still pregnant.
It is unusual, but not unheard of, to get pregnant with more than one baby, and miscarry one, but not the other (my mother did this, and so did her mother, and several friends of mine). I KNOW I ovulated more than once this cycle, several days apart (that is also pretty common in older women, and I've been doing that a lot recently), so there is some logic here, not just wishful thinking. Pregnancy symptoms mostly disappeared before the miscarriage started, but are now coming back, including nausea, sore breasts, uterine ligament pain, etc.
Right now, I feel so worn out, like there is a huge vacuum attached to my energy and nutritional reserves. I need some suggestions on how to address this because if I can't find more ways to deal with it, I'll lose this baby too.
Four major complicating limitations on this:
1. I CAN'T take any additional refined supplements (they cause too many other problems). I have to do this with food.
2. There are a lot of types of food I can't break down, so I need some creative ideas to work with the ones I can break down.
3. Financial resources are limited - so I need to do it as frugally as possible. I also live in a COLD climate right now, and we are in the process of preparing to move.
4. Doctors WON'T help me. They don't know how except with meds that are so terrible I don't want to take them (and which will kill a baby), and they only diagnose and treat Crohn's when it is in the end stages, and I've controlled mine so well they can't identify it because I have very little bowel pain now, and doctors do not recognize the malabsorption syndromes that accompany it until after you have surgery to remove part of your bowel, even though the malabsorption is often worse before surgery than after. Blood tests do not show accurate nutrient levels either, nor can they measure the reserves in the body, and they don't measure whether your body actually RELEASES reserves or hoards them.
First, some history...
I have Crohn's Disease. This means I have malabsorption from two causes:
1. I don't break some foods up enough to extract the nutrients from them.
2. I may not absorb nutrients once they ARE broken down. I absorb nutrients best from natural foods, they are just more absorbable, IF I can break the food down sufficiently.
A little over eight years ago, my husband and I decided we were ready to have another baby. Our youngest was six years old at the time. Normally I'd get pregnant, miscarry, then get pregnant and carry to term (did not know at the time, but this is a classic pattern for auto-immune miscarriage, which often accompanies Crohn's). Anyway, I expected that again, so was not unduly distressed over the first miscarriage, or even the second. But this time it was different.
I miscarried every cycle for 18 months, with the losses getting earlier and earlier each time, until I was an average of 1 week late each time.
I know within 24 hours of conception that I am pregnant. My body tells me that very quickly. I've had enough kids, I should know. I could feel the pregnancy kick in, then I'd feel the symptoms disappear, and then I'd have a late, very heavy, period. The OB who diagnosed the auto-immune miscarriages said that is typical for them.
We finally had one stick. I carried her to term, and she died in my arms 18 minutes after her birth, due to a fatal genetic disorder. We have wanted another child ever since, because ending without a child to raise just doesn't seem right to us.
That was almost six years ago, and I've been miscarrying ever since. Recently I began some natural treatments for the Crohn's, and the pregnancies have been lasting a day or so longer each time, but still not very long. Not long enough to suck anything out of me like this one is doing.
The usual pattern of auto-immune disease with pregnancy is that when you first get pregnant, the auto-immune disease gets worse, as the immune system gets hyper-sensitive because of the pregnancy. But later, as the pregnancy hormones and growth factors kick in, the auto-immune disease usually gets better. So if I can make it to about three months, I should be able to consistently improve from there (this happened with my pregnancy with Sidney).
When you have had Crohn's for a long time, you tend to slowly use up your reserves, and you can get into a situation where you are deficient in some key nutrients - most commonly B-12, B-6, Folic Acid, Magnesium, and sometimes A, D, and Calcium. When you try to exercise, your body thinks it is starving, so it WITHDRAWS nutrients, rather than releasing them. This makes you STOP, because it HURTS. The muscles ache to the point where you simply cannot continue, they have no support to keep moving.
This used to happen to me all the time, but after starting the natural treatment last summer, it stopped doing that.
For the last two days, it is back, only it is really bad. If I am up walking around for even two or three minutes I start hurting. My hip and thigh muscles just starve out really fast.
I'm pretty sure this is happening because this time the baby is implanted solidly enough that it has thrown my body into crisis mode again, and it is just refusing to release nutrients. I seem to do better if I eat right before I get up and move around - that is a longstanding trick used with exercise too, it seems to trick the body into letting go of some, in the face of plenty.
The other problem is that I am VERY hungry at times that I usually am not, and I'm having symptoms of specific deficiencies every few hours - I can't seem to eat enough squash, drink enough milk, or get enough meat to satisfy the increasing need for Vitamin A, B-12, and Protein and B-6 (those are some of the only foods that I seem to get those nutrients from). I am waking up in the night with cramping stomach aches from hunger, and waking up that way in the morning also. If I go more than two hours between meals, I am getting those belly aches either - and they are very definitely hunger pain.
I don't seem to digest milk protein very well right now. I do well with protein from elk, Muscovy, rabbit, and deer. I can't seem to get much at all out of beef, chicken, or antelope (which I don't mind at all since I can't stand antelope anyway).
So I need to come up with some creative ways to get more of the following nutrients, or to be able to absorb them more easily:
1. B-6 - I'm not absorbing this well right now, and I'm not breaking it down out of foods well either. Acidophilous helps a little with this, but not enough. This is a critical nutrient, because it is a key in using other nutrients, and in getting the body to release and use stored nutrients.
2. B-12 - I can't take supplements for this. I get it out of Bantam eggs really well, and could from Quail eggs too, but don't have either of those at the moment. I don't digest larger regular sized chicken eggs very well.
3. Vitamin A - I can get this from mango, squash and cooked carrots, but I'm eating WAY too much of them. I don't have room in my diet for the carbs from the squash and mango, and if I eat too many carrots I just don't digest them.
4. Potassium - I can get a little from bananas and a fair amount from avocados, but I can't eat more than one banana a day, and I can't afford very many organic avocados!
5. Calcium - I don't seem to be absorbing this except from goat's milk, and a little with acidophilous. But I'm drinking 8 or more glasses of milk a day and still having deficiency symptoms.
6. Folic Acid - I don't seem to absorb this from many foods right now. I do take a supplement, but am not absorbing that very well either.
I know when I am low on some of these, because I get specific symptoms - heart palpitations, nerve pain, disordered thought patterns, dizziness, fatigue, etc. It stays around until I manage to get a form of food or supplement that has it, and then it resolves. The pattern has been very clear for many years, so I'm not just assuming here, I can duplicate the symptom and response pattern.
So, I need brainstorm ideas to figure out if there are more nutrient dense foods I am not thinking of for sources of some of these - easily digestible foods are best. Also, whether there are things I can do to enhance the digestion and absorption of the existing foods. And third, whether there are things I can do to further heal my bowel while my body adjusts hormonally, until things improve because of the pregnancy.
I can't use refined foods, or anything with preservatives or chemicals of any kind.
I can grow alfalfa sprouts, I do use wheatgrass. I am eating fresh spinach, romaine, zucchini, cabbage (cooked - can't eat it raw), apples, bananas, dried mangoes, cooked carrots (can't have those raw either), elk meat, rabbit meat, a small amount of goat milk (our goats are almost dried up), and lactose free organic cow's milk (the only other kind I can tolerate at all), plus homemade fermented dough breads.
I don't eat canned foods, or processed foods, because they either don't have enough in them to bother with that I can digest, or they have things in them that hurt me.
I want this baby to live. It is the first one in a long time that was still alive more than a few days past implantation.
for you and the baby.
