The "Big E" is a big pain in the A

Get my drift? 

Yesterday we met with the Geneticist at Children's Hospital.
My first question to them was this... how did I get this antibody since I didn't get it giving birth to Cassie, my blood work by my first fertility clinic showed I already carried the antibody before she was conceived. Since I have never had a blood transfusion they think more than likely I got pregnant naturally before IVF and had a early miscarriage which would put the babies blood and my blood into contact thereby creating the antibody.  Now that was interesting to hear!!

   She explained more about the E Antibody.

There are 3 scenarios that someone can carry in their blood:

EE
Ee
ee

They think I am ee and Matt is either EE or Ee.   He could be ee but that would be strange because my body would have then created the antibody out of nowhere.  If Matt is EE then a future baby would for sure carry the big "E" and my blood would attack it.  If Matt is Ee then the baby has a 50% chance of carrying the big "E". 

They also measure the antibody in my blood by titers.  Its a ratio thing.   Mine was under 1 which is good.  What she explained to me is after they diluted my blood 1 time with saline they could no longer see the antibody.   Titers can be higher than mine and they can rise in pregnancy.   If I were to get pregnant my blood would be tested once a month and if my titers rose above a certain number that means my blood is attacking the baby and intrauterine blood transfusions would be needed.  She said its good my numbers are low but it doesn't guantee they couldn't rise if pregnant.  She said they may not rise or they may rise and I could need 9 intrauterine transfusions and then I could loose the baby at 28 weeks.  That's a scary scenario she gave me.  We told her we would be willing to face this if we could get pregnant naturally but to pay $18,000 for IVF which is a stressful procedure in itself I can't imagine becoming pregnant, having complications like that and possibly loosing the baby. Emotionally I don't think I could do it and its not a risk we want to take.  She totally understood. 

Because we still don't know what is up with Matts blood he is having it drawn today so we should know in a couple of days what were dealing with.  

Another weird thing is why my first fertility clinic never mentioned anything to me about this.  The geneticist thought maybe because my titers were low or because it was a first pregnancy (first pregnancies are generally not affected).  Still....odd that nothing was said to us.  She also looked at our old records to see if they were monitoring my titer levels when I was pregnant with Cassie and there was nothing.  I quess God knew she was going to stress her poor Mommy and Daddy out enough when she was born with her medical problems he didn't want to push us over the edge with blood transfusions.  :o)

So that is our story.   We are ok with everything and actually can laugh about it...its such a crazy ride. What else can you do?  We are just thankful for our sweet little girl.