Today I had an appointment with a Hematologist. My understanding is that they deal with your blood. When I met with my mid-wife last week we discussed the meds I was taking. Well I've been taking extra folic acid and a baby aspirin and it was because of the potential for MTHFR (and, no it's not a bad word!).
I explained to her that when we were going through fertility treatments I told my
fertility doc that a couple of my cousins on my mom's side of the family
with the condition. My female cousins have had problems miscarriages and/or unexplained pregnancy complications
which (turns out) is a symptom of MTHFR or Factor V. The fertility doc said that there are
multiple variations and most time the preventive is folic acid and baby
aspirin. So he put me on those instead of testing me.
Factor V according to Doctor Google:
Its an inherited blood clotting disorder. Both men and women can have factor V Leiden, but women may have an increased tendency to develop blood clots during pregnancy or when taking the hormone estrogen.
Normally, factor V is a clotting protein. But, people with factor V
Leiden have a genetic mutation that causes the factor V protein to
respond more slowly to being deactivated by the anti-clotting factors.
If you have factor V Leiden, you either inherited one copy of the
defective gene (heterozygous), which slightly increases your risk of
developing blood clots, or more rarely you inherited two copies, one
from each parent (homozygous), which significantly increases your risk
of developing blood clots.
Well now the midwife has decided that I should be tested since I'm now pregnant. Which brings us back to present day the appointment today. So turns out that Factor V and MTHFR are two different things. The doctor thought with my family history and that I've had successful pregnancies that I might have the lesser version of MTHFR. Which is a relief and one less thing to worry about.
We'll know for sure in 7-10 days for sure. I'll update later when the results come back in.
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