Et tu Prometrium?

It has been a grueling three weeks since my last update. There was the lovely trip to Leavenworth and my neice's birthday dinner, but most every other moment has been very unpleasant. I was almost getting used to the nausea. Getting a handle on it anyway. I finished up the last of my IVF follow-up hormones on the 18th, had my last fertility clinic visit the next day for a blood test, then to the pharmacy for some Colace that afternoon. Despite why I was there, I enjoyed the little trip, because it was my first time driving in about 2 weeks, and the nausea from earlier that day had abated. Everything went downhill very quickly from there.

I had no idea constipation and bloating could be so painful and soul-crushing. Days of being so full that I spent most of my time wondering if I was going to burst or vomit first. Every 2-3 hours, I would get ravenously hungry, eat a small bit of food, endure painful digestion with burning and stomach cramps, have less than an hour's reprieve, and then start the process over. Bed time was the worst because I take all my medications 30-45 minutes before bed with a full glass of milk or juice.  My doctor suggested the Colace that I had already started, and also Metamucil. This didn't seem to do a whole lot of good. By Friday the 23rd, the bloating was abating despite continued constipation, and a new symptom arrived: spotting and uterine cramping. Over the weekend, the spotting got worse and so did the cramping, which actually had the effect of "moving along" the constipation. My bowels were getting better, my stomach wasn't hurting when introduced to food, but that afternoon I became seriously worried about the intensity of the cramps and brightness of what was no longer really spotting, but not quite a flow either.

And then I picked up my phone and got a voice mail that, despite constantly checking for on Monday and Tuesday, my provider decided to hide from me until I gave up looking when I was so sick. The blood test showed my progesterone levels weren't where they should be, and I should continue taking Prometrium (200mg) 3x a day for the next two weeks. There was much freaking out after that. The after-hours nurse at my fertility clinic consulted with a doctor, and in the end it was decided that there wasn't anything they would do differently despite the spotting/cramping, they just wanted me to start up the hormones again immediately. Which I had already done much earlier, since it took them 4 hours to get back to me. Sundays!

I woke up this morning clear-minded and energetic, and with my first real appetite in over a week. I have not had eggs for over a month now, and this morning I just had to have one after Eric made eggs for himself. This afternoon, 24 hours after starting back on the Prometrium, the spotting is almost gone, the cramping is on the way out and manageable without pain reliever, there's been almost no nausea, and NO naps!

Prometrium, you are my new best friend! I take back everything bad I ever said about you in the past! Bring on the swollen breasts and nausea - baby and I will deal with that just fine from now on!

I went online to see if anyone else had had anything similar happen to them - could the week of constipation and stomach cramps and bloating to explosion levels have been caused by going cold turkey? I didn't see any evidence of that, but I'm pretty sure it was responsible for the spotting/cramping. It's an odd drug to research - you can't just go online, read the first hit about side effects and be done with it. Because the first thing you'll see is that you're not supposed to take it while pregnant. Way to scare the pregnant lady by slapping that sticker on the bottle guys! I didn't find cases online like mine, but plenty of women freaked out from that warning!

But Prometrium is one of those drugs that has multiple uses - menopause hormone therapy, cycle regulation, forcing a period, balancing out women with making too much estrogen, as well as keeping baby safe after IVF implantation. I am in that last class, because for some reason an IVF pregnancy does not trigger the necessary amount of progesterone to be manufactured naturally. A companion to the estrogen injections (that I do not have to restart!) that helped build up my uterine lining as baby first developed, progesterone was telling my body not to shed that lining. By the 2nd trimester, the baby will be making enough progesterone that I can stop again. Unfortunately, there isn't an exact date for that to happen, so we're going another full 2 weeks.

It's just kind of scary that there are a group of women out there that are afraid to take their doctor's prescribed Prometrium, and another group afraid to discontinue it when it's time. It seems the information sharing out there isn't that great for Prometrium. Between what doctors say/don't say and what patients hear/don't hear/forget, there is a lot of drama!