About Progesterone

I mentioned in my Ramblings post a couple days ago that my progesterone was REALLY low on 11/8 - the day the m/c was discovered.

It was 4. Yes F-O-U-R.

That is a level that will not only not support pregnancy, but won't even support getting pregnant. (P should be between 5-10 post ovulation just to support implantation. It should be well over 15 to support pregnancy until the placenta takes over that function sometime around 12 weeks.)

So let me repeat. Mine was fucking four.

What does this mean? It either means that the embryo ceased to be viable and my progesterone tanked immediately OR my corpus luteum failed, and my lack of progesterone is what terminated the pregnancy.

What do we know? We know the embryo grew a fair bit between the 2 ultrasounds. So even though we don't know exactly when that amazing little heartbeat stopped flickering, the amount of growth would indicate it was closer to when we did the second ultrasound than the first. So would a normal progesterone level (should have been well over 20) plummet in just a day or two down to 4? Don't know, but doesn't seem likely to me.

What seems more likely is that my progesterone may have been on the edge the whole time. I hadn't had blood drawn since I was 5 weeks along, so I don't know this either. But it's a lot easier to imagine that my progesterone was falling over time and ended up so low that viability ceased somewhere along the way.

Why else is this the most likely culprit in my head? Because thyroid and progesterone are very tightly related and we know that my thyroid levels are not ideal for pregnancy. (Despite being blown off by my doctors.)

My doctor said she would prescribe progesterone the next time I was pregnant - even though we'll never know whether or not the death of the embryo caused the P drop or the other way around. But she said nothing about looking into my thyroid as a culprit.

Just one of the many reasons I'm moving onto a specialist in RPL.