My Story of Miscarriage & Unexplained Secondary Infertility

I got married young, and I had my first child at 26. We hadn’t been trying to conceive when we got pregnant that first time, but I had been off of birth control for some time when it happened. I assumed I was one of the lucky fertile women who got pregnant easily. We decided we wanted our children back to back and tried again the following year. I was pregnant the second month of trying. Still blissfully unaware of what was to come, I prepared for 2 under 2.

I had a perfect ultrasound at 10 weeks showing a bouncing baby, and we scheduled our anatomy scan for the day before Thanksgiving. We were going to be hosting our families for the holiday and would reveal the baby’s gender at the celebration. I was so excited.

My whole world flipped upside down when I went for my anatomy scan at 17 weeks. I’ll never forget the look on the tech’s face when they started the ultrasound. I looked at the big monitor on the wall. I had one child already, so I knew what an ultrasound at 17 weeks should look like. The baby wasn’t nearly developed enough. The tech excused himself for a moment, and a doctor returned in his place. She told us the baby had stopped developing weeks before and had no heartbeat. I was suffering from what is called a missed miscarriage. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was panicked. I needed to leave that room.

I had a choice: I could wait and see if my body would let go of the pregnancy or schedule a D&C. I immediately knew I wanted the D&C, and I wanted it as soon as possible. I didn’t feel like I could even begin to process this until my dead baby was no longer in my body. I had the surgery that night and went home to begin healing and grieving. It was like no loss I had ever experienced before. I was devastated.

I was cleared to start trying again within a few weeks and naively assumed I would get pregnant again quickly. In fact, I buried my grief instead of facing it and spent all of my energy on trying to conceive again. It didn’t happen the first month, the next, and the next, until we were visiting our doctor after a year. We were young and healthy and had conceived twice. What gives?

We went through a full fertility workup and were diagnosed with unexplained infertility. What a gut punch. Basically, it’s a diagnosis that says, “We can’t find anything wrong in your reproductive tract or with your husband’s sperm, and we really don’t know what the deal is.” We were told it was time for fertility treatments. We tried IUI. I didn’t cope well with the fertility drugs, and IVF was going to cost $15-50k. I felt like giving up hope.

If I’d known what I know now about functional health, I would have been able to dig in with functional labs and get to the root cause of what was causing the infertility. I would have made the necessary changes in my life to start healing from what I later discovered (gut issues, hormone imbalances, and nutrient and mineral deficiencies that all tie directly or indirectly to reproductive health).

Doctors aren’t trained to do this, so they rely on what they know: reproductive workup followed by fertility treatments. The reproductive system isn’t the only part of the body that impacts fertility. There are many connections to fertility in your body, such as your gut, liver, thyroid, and more.

I created Fertility Functionally for women who are on the path to growing their families and looking for root cause answers to help them not only improve their fertility but heal too. If you’re getting ready to try to conceive, struggling with infertility, or somewhere in between, this program is for you. For a fraction of the cost of a single cycle of fertility treatments, you get real answers, a plan to truly heal the root causes, and a certified expert supporting you through the process. We invite you to check out our program page to learn more.