So I'm obsessing over whether my husband's health had anything to do with my recent miscarriage.
I'm 23, he'll be 43 in a month. He has four healthy children- the last was born ten years ago. They had no miscarriages or trouble conceiving at all. I have a healthy daughter from when I was 19. So when we were ready to start trying, we figured it would just be all systems go. When I got pregnant my SIL joked that we were like the Easy Bake Oven. Then I lost the baby at 10 weeks- we went for an ultrasound and there was no heartbeat.
I know that one miscarriage doesn't always mean anything, but it just bothers me. We conceived quickly, after only two months of trying, and I actually had a missed miscarriage -my body held onto the pregnancy for 2-4 weeks- so it's unlikely that I have any hormonal issues going on. I've had regular, strong cycles ever since my daughter's birth. I ovulate like clockwork and make buckets of EWCM every time.
My husband's health is... not the greatest. He's overweight and he has problems with gouty arthritis and asthma, so it's nearly impossible for him to exercise without pain. He takes several medications for his chronic sinusitis, the gout, asthma, IBS, GERD, and cholesterol. We eat middle-of-the-road well. I cook from scratch 70% of the time, do box-type meals 10% of the time, and eat out about 10% of the time.
He was never a healthy person- he's had reflux since he was a baby, he got pneumonia when he was two and again when he was six and again when he was eight and he's allergic to EVERYTHING under the sun. The asthma is well controlled but anything more than a brisk walk makes it hard for him to breathe, especially since the air here in Salt Lake is hardly fit to breathe (I WISH we could move but we just can't right now- upside down on our house). His IBS and GERD have gotten better since he's been eating better and probiotic therapy helps, but he can't go off the meds for those completely. He has sleep apnea that isn't improved with a CPAP and our insurance won't cover another sleep study and we can't afford another out of pocket. The sleep apnea makes him tired a lot which is worsened by being overweight which is hard to fix since he can't exercise easily because of his joints and the exercise makes it hard to breathe which makes it hard for him to lose weight which also makes the asthma and joint problems worse and it's basically one giant crappy viscious circle. Doctors have been supremely unhelpful. "Lose weight and go to a nutritionist." Gee. You mean the nutritionist that INSURANCE DOESN'T COVER? Thanks ever so.
Trying to find out if his medications affect his sperm is like trying to nail Jello to the wall. So little research has been done on male fertility. I do know that fertility in men goes down after 40, but I was so hopeful because he had four healthy kids already... And he knocked me up so easily! So obviously his count and motility are all right. Should we have a sperm analysis done? Would there be anything they could tell us anyway, besides tell him to lose weight and try to go off the meds, which we're already trying to do? We couldn't afford ISCI so if the results were bad we'd basically have to go to a sperm donor, which we probably wouldn't do unless I had another two miscarriages or something. I waited two years to start trying and now I'm freaking out that we wasted our chance.
~Rose
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