Early miscarriage - 25 things to know when trying to conceive

Dr Randy Morris MD teaches everything you should know about Early Miscarriage.



Stay tuned to the end for advice about getting pregnant again after an early miscarriage.



#earlymiscarriage #miscarriage #ttc



The first and maybe the most important thing to know about early miscarriage is that is extremely common. Between 50 to 60% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Of those, about half are very early miscarriages which often occur before a woman even knows she is pregnant.



An early miscarriage is defined as a pregnancy loss that occurs during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. But really, most early miscarriages occur before your doctor can see a fetus with heart motion on an ultrasound which is typically around 7 to 8 weeks.



The good news is that if you have an early pregnancy and are experiencing vaginal bleeding, but your doctor can see fetal heart motion on ultrasound, 95% of those pregnancies will go on to result in a viable baby.



A slow heart rate on ultrasound, however, is a concerning sign. A slow heart rate is seen in nearly 70% of early miscarriages. Stated another way, the likelihood of having an early miscarriage is 30 times higher if the ultrasound shows a low heart rate. A slow heart rate in combination with vaginal bleeding is seen in 85% of early miscarriages. How slow is slow? If the measured heart rate is less than 110 bpm, then that is of concern



A number of things can cause an early miscarriage. The most common cause is the embryo or fetus does not have the correct number of chromosomes. A normal fetus has 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent. 60-70% of early miscarriages are found to have an incorrect number of chromosomes. As women get older, this number gets higher. So older women are more likely to have a miscarriage and any given miscarriage is more likely to be from a chromosome problem.



Other things that probably increase the- risk for early miscarriage include:

-- Smoking

-- Drinking Alcohol

-- Caffeine

-- Obesity

-- Taking supplements (other than prenatals)



Things that do NOT cause early miscarriage include

-- Stress

-- Having sex during pregnancy

-- Exercise during pregnancy

-- Using birth control before pregnancy

-- Falling during pregnancy

-- Getting hit in the abdomen

-- Morning sickness



In fact, women with morning sickness have a lower risk of miscarriage. 



The most common signs and symptoms of early miscarriage are vaginal bleeding and cramping. However, these symptoms are also pretty common in women who do not go on to have an early miscarriage.



If you are pregnant and have bleeding, please contact your doctor for further evaluation. Your doctor will want to get a blood test to measure your hCG levels and an ultrasound. This is important to do because some women with early pregnancy bleeding may actually have a tubal pregnancy which is less common but much more dangerous.



One of the most common questions I get asked is: Can an early miscarriage be prevented? The answer depends on whether your are already pregnant. If you are not pregnant and you are trying to prevent an early miscarriage in your next pregnancy, then there are a number of things you can do.



Stop those bad habits, Avoid alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine. If you are overweight - lose weight. If you are older, ask your doctor about IVF combined with testing the embryos for chromosome abnormalities.



If you have had multiple early miscarriages, meaning three or more, see you doctor to be evaluated for recurrent pregnancy loss. There may be treatable problems that can be found



If you are already pregnant, besides the things I discussed before, there is probably not much you can do. Bed rest will not help. Avoiding stress will not help though it may make you feel better. Taking progesterone supplements have been recommended in the past but there really is very little evidence that it will reduce the chance for an early miscarriage. But, it probably won’t harm anything.



Another question I get all the time is: How soon can you try to conceive after having had a miscarriage? In the past, doctors told patients, without any evidence, to wait at least three months. However, we have solid scientific data that shows; attempting pregnancy again right away, as soon as you start ovulating will increase the chance for a successful pregnancy. This could happen within a few weeks of an early miscarriage.



Finally, if you need fertility treatment to conceive, we recommend that you evaluate the uterine cavity before starting treatment again.





Dr Morris is a practicing IVF and infertility expert who sees patients at IVF! located in the Naperville Fertility Center.



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or visit our website at IVF1.com





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Do cell phones or EMF affect your fertility or miscarriage risk?

Are cell phones a cause for your infertility or miscarriages? What is EMF? Find out from Dr Randy Morris MD-The BOARD CERTIFIED fertility expert with weekly TTC tips on InfertilityTV



Cell phones produce low level EMF or electromagnetic fields. We have cell phones on our body pretty much all day. Could that be the reason you are having trouble getting pregnant or staying pregnant?. Stay tuned to find out.



First, lets talk about the guys. Most of the studies on cell phones have studied men and their sperm. Many studies have found a link between cell phone use and some abnormality in a semen analysis. The trouble is not all studies have found an impact.



Studies that did show an impact on sperm, didn’t always show the same problem. For example, some showed lower sperm counts while others showed a lower percentage of moving sperm. One of the best studies to date, out of Boston, tried to account for as many cell phone related variables as possible like information on how much time was spent on the phone, whether a headset or earpiece was used, where on the body they carried the phone. They also tried to account for other variables like smoking, diet and obesity.



Bottom line? They did not find an impact of cell phones on any sperm numbers.



What about women? They use cell phones too. My research turned up four studies that all concluded that increased exposure to EMFs resulted in an increase in the risk for miscarriage. The more exposure the greater the risk.



One problem in looking at these studies is that there are so many sources of EMF besides cells phones from microwaves to vacuum cleaners. However, one study compared over 200 women who had an unexplained miscarriage to an equal sized group who did not have miscarriage. This study found a statistically valid relationship between cell phone use and miscarriage.



For example, women in the miscarriage group averaged 9 and a half minutes of talk time each day.. The non miscarriage group averaged only 3 minutes. The miscarriage group was three times more likely to keep their phones in their pockets and more than twice as likely to use their phone for other stuff besides talking.



Remember, that just because the cell phone use and miscarriage are linked does NOT mean that cell phones cause miscarriage. Finally, and I can’t stress this enough. There is no evidence that buying an expensive cell phone EMF shield does anything but make your bank account lighter. 



So until we have better data, you could take some reasonable precautions and put away your cell phone but before you do, tap or click here to subscribe



Infertility TV is your weekly source for the best medical information if you have infertility, recurrent miscarriage or are just trying to conceive. (TTC). InfertilityTV covers infertility testing, fertility treatments such as Clomid, Follistim and Crinone and fertility treatments like IUI and IVF (in vitro fertilization)



One of the most popular playlists on InfertilityTV are the TTC tips which are great even you are not struggling with infertility



Dr Morris is a practicing IVF and infertility expert who sees patients at IVF! located in the Naperville Fertility Center.



Increase your "Infertelligence"  ™



Subscribe to Infertility TV now!!!

A new episode of Infertility TV is broadcast weekly every Thursday afternoon



or visit our website at IVF1.com



*******************************************

Do you want to become a patient at IVF1?

*******************************************



Register online here:

https://patient.ivf1.com/PatientPortal/NewPatient



Or call:

630-357-6540

Testosterone TRT and Fertility - The 3 most important things to know in ...

Are you a bodybuilder? Or have you been diagnosed with Low T testosterone? Watch this video if you ever want to have kids



First, to produce normal amounts of healthy sperm, a man must produce the correct hormones from the pituitary gland and testosterone from the testicles. This is an extremely important point. Men need a really high level of testosterone INSIDE THE TESTICLES for sperm production but testosterone alone cannot start or maintain sperm production



If a man is taking #testosterone supplements by ANY method #trt  patches, gels, shots whatever, they will suppresses the production of the pituitary hormones which in turn, causes the high levels of  testosterone inside the testicles to plummet.



The resulting testosterone levels in the blood are not nearly high to produce sperm but even if they were - there are still no hormones from the pituitary gland to help out.



This results in a suppression of sperm production so pronounced that it can actually be used as a male contraceptive. Let's put that another way. If a group of men is taking testosterone supplements, the sperm production will drop to 0 in nearly 90% of them. That’s no sperm. At all.



#fertility



The good news is that most men who have no sperm will recover after they stop using. But most is not all. Even a year after stopping, some men will still have no sperm or very low levels of sperm leaving them infertile.



Rescue medications like Clomid, hCG and hMG may help speed up the time it takes to resume sperm production but it doesn’t work for everybody. The longer you used and the higher dose, the greater the chance that you might not recover.



What’s the take home? If you are thinking about having children in the future, try to stay off testosterone supplements. If you must take T. Use as low a dose as possible for as short a time as possible. Go off of testosterone several months before you want to attempt pregnancy.



You can get great videos like this one delivered to your phone or computer every week. For free! All you have to do is tap or click right here. It couldn’t be easier. Its like having your own fertility specialist in your phone. Go ahead, try it!

Smoking and Infertility - 5 Things You Didn't Know

Its no surprise that smoking causes infertility. What is surprising is how much impact it has. I may have some good news at the end for you smokers



#1 Here’s a message I got from my website: Dr. Morris why do you have so much information about smoking? Nobody smokes anymore. Oh really? Even in 2018, about ⅓ of men and women of reproductive age in the United States are smokers. Despite all the warnings and public service announcements. One in three!



#2 Think cigarette smoke is only in the lungs? Think again. A recent study in IVF patients found breakdown products of nicotine in 100% of the follicular fluids of infertility patients undergoing IVF. The more they smoked, the higher the levels were found. In other words, if you are a smoker, your eggs are soaking 24 hours a day in cigarette smoke breakdown products.



Even more alarming? In that same study, 84% of women who were non-smokers and whose partners were non smokers, also had nicotine by-products in their follicular fluid. In other words, the people who smoke at your job are compromising your fertility!



#3 Smokers, you are going to run out eggs sooner. Cigarette smoking has been shown to accelerate the loss of eggs from the ovaries. One of the blood tests we use to measure how many eggs are left is the hormone FSH. Higher FSH levels mean less eggs remain. You commonly see this as women get older. Guess what? Smokers have 66% higher FSH levels than non-smokers. You are likely to go through menopause at an earlier age.-



#4 Smoking also affects IVF success. I know what you are thinking: I’ll just do IVF. Everybody gets pregnant with IVF right? Agreed, IVF is a very good treatment for most types of infertility. However, smokers doing IVF needed higher doses of those expensive fertility injections, but they still ended up with more cycles getting cancelled, less eggs when they weren’t cancelled, more cycles with failed fertilization and overall had a much lower pregnancy rate.



#5 Fine Dr. Morris. You have succeeded in stressing me out, I’m never going to get pregnant, I might as well just have another pack of cigarettes. Wait! Stop! I actually have some good news. Quitting smoking will improve your fertility. In fact, ex-smokers have similar fertility to non-smokers.



OK. That’s 5 things. For more information on smoking and fertility, go to my website at ivf1.com

But first, hit that subscribe button. Its right here! You’ll get fertility tips every week! Its like having a fertility specialist in your phone!