Hi, I am Dr. Ankita Srivastava. I am a gynaecologist and obstetrician with over 10 years of experience. I currently practice at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi and at Zoe Nutrition For Life. I am the co-creator of the conceive effortlessly online program. It is a 3 month online program designed to provide personalised care and attention to you from leading experts in the country and help you get pregnant faster, naturally, easily & most definitely. 😊
I often interact with several patients who are a part of my online program to give them personalised consultations and guide them regarding the problems that they are facing in their pregnancy journey. This, along with my experience practicing at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi, have together helped me understand and know some of the most common and unaddressed queries, issues and concerns that modern couples face when they are trying to start their family and conceive a baby. I also believe that we can all learn from each other's journey as well as the experiences, hence, I document interactions with several of my patients so that others can learn from these documentations as well. One such case has been shared by me below.
Patient's query:
"I have cardiolipin antibody. I wanted to understand what are my chances of conceiving naturally? The doctor I was seeing prior had suggested to go for IUI."
This patient had also shared with me that she also had two miscarriages in the past. The first one was at 6 weeks and the other one was at 4 weeks. You can find my recommendations for the patient in the section below.
My recommendations:
"Cardiolipin antibody is basically going to cause recurrent miscarriages and that's why you've had two miscarriages. However, the good thing is that you have detected it. In a lot of cases, it goes undiagnosed for a long time and the patient ends up with several miscarriages. In your case, at least you have started the procedure of ending this miscarriage trail. Now it's not going to happen again because now we know the reason, right? So what we can do is you can, you can try to conceive naturally. IUI is not the only option, I would say, you can go for natural conception, but you need to be on folic acid supplements from the beginning of your pregnancy, you'll also have to be on Ecosprin, which is a blood thinner and also on low molecular weight heparin (also known as LMWH). Now, let's try to understand how these are going to help you in your case. But, before that, we need to understand what exactly happens if you have cardiolipin antibody. This antibody is basically going to cause blood clots. And these blood clots are lodging from you to the baby in the placental vessels. Due to this, the baby is not able to get oxygen and by six weeks or so, the baby is not able to thrive anymore. Now that we know the reason, let's understand what can be done in order to prevent the blood clots from being formed. So, for this, we use blood thinners, we use low molecular weight heparins, both of which will help and thin out the blood and the blood clots are prevented from forming, thus, promoting a good blood supply between you and the baby. This ensures all your blood, the oxygen and the nutrients are going into the baby and the miscarriage will be avoided. Along with that, we'll give you progesterone supports. As I told you, progesterone will hold the pregnancy. It will help it go till term. So we'll give you progesterone supports along with that. All of these measures make sure that the blood supply is intact and the pregnancy is being held very, very firmly to your Uterus. IUI can also be one of the options, but, with recurrent miscarriage, natural pregnancy also has very good results. So you don't necessarily need to go for IUI right away given that every other factor is fine for you along with your husband's sperm count and all your other investigations. You can also share all your other investigations and test results so that we can analyze whether you need IUI right now or if you can go in for one more natural pregnancy, with all these precautions that I just mentioned. All these precautions are very, very necessary. We'll analyze the reports and we'll see if you really need to go for IUI right away or not but you will definitely be able to conceive because you've caught the culprit at the right time and we're going to treat it, we're going to manage it and we're going to prevent anymore for the miscarriages."
· · ·
I hope you found this article useful. If you want a detailed consultation with me, you can write to me or drop me a whatsapp. You can also read another article by Dr. Parul Chopra Buttan on understanding all about PCOS by clicking here.
You can go Zoe's 3 month fertility program- Conceive Effortlessly, to boost fertility and achieve pregnancy faster by clicking below. You can also check out some of our other programs that help you improve your overall lifestyle:
2. Deep Sleep Meditation for a healthy and fulfilling sleep, every night.
4. EASY30’ Workout Program: At-home workouts for weight loss & fitness.
Love and good health,
Dr. Ankita Srivastava
Gynaecologist & Obstetrician
MBBS, MS, DNB, MRCOGII (London)
Email: drankita@zoe.menu | Whatsapp: 8527198370
At Zoe we have created an online program to help you improve fertility and get pregnant faster by adapting small lifestyle changes that focus on weight, nutrition, sleep and mindset. This video series is your and your partner’s perfect pregnancy planner. Check it out here.
