Fiona Smith, 38, raised over £1,600 for the Miscarriage Association

Photo by www.deesidepiper.co.uk
Banchory mum says London marathon was "fantastic"

A BANCHORY mother-of-two said completing the London Marathon to raise money for a charity which helped her through two miscarriages was an "emotional experience".

Fiona Smith, 38, raised over £1,600 for the Miscarriage Association by finishing the 26.2-mile run through the English capital in five hours and 49 minutes.

She told the Piper: "It was fantastic and I loved every minute of it. I had set myself the target of finishing the marathon somewhere between five and six hours so I was really happy to reach my goal.

"When I crossed the finishing line it was a very emotional experience."

However the marathon was no walk in the park for Fiona and she had to give herself a pep talk to keep going when she started to struggle with five miles to go.

Fiona explained: "The hardest part was at mile 21. I had run all of the way until there but then my legs started seizing up and I think that was where I hit that infamous 'wall'.

"But I just gave myself a good talking to and remembered that I was doing this for a great charity. That gave me the motivation I needed to keep going and complete the run."

The senior clerical assistant at Banchory Community Learning Centre is delighted with the money she has raised for Miscarriage Association.

"My target was £1,300 and I am still getting people donating money now. I have raised £1,600 so far and I can't thank everybody who has contributed enough," she said.

Fiona is now searching for her next big challenge having well and truly caught the running bug.

She said: "I have been looking on the internet to try and find the next run I can take part in. I just want to get back into the gym and keep up with the training."

Fiona thoroughly recommends the experience to anyone who may be considering taking part in next year's London Marathon.

She added: "It was a really great day and I had a fantastic time. I'm a mother with two young kids and if I can do it then anyone can."

Source: http://www.deesidepiper.co.uk/news/Banchory-mum-says-London-marathon.4021791.jp

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Emotional Roller Coaster Accompanies Miscarriages

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Amy Drorbaugh woke up one morning and felt something was wrong. As she lay in her bed trying to pinpoint the change, she figured out what was different.

"I didn't feel pregnant anymore," Drorbaugh said.

Drorbaugh was 16 weeks pregnant. She was wearing maternity clothes, everyone was excited for her, and she had regular talks with her 4-year-old to explain a baby was growing inside her.

She was concerned about having a miscarriage, but after she was 12 weeks pregnant, she knew the chances of a miscarrying decreased significantly, so she thought her baby would be fine.

She went in for an ultrasound the same day she felt something was wrong. She and her husband could tell the baby wasn't moving.

"We knew at that moment the baby had died," Drorbaugh said.

After five days of emotional and physical pain, she was induced and delivered her dead baby, a girl they named Daisy.

Drorbaugh's miscarriage was devastating. It took her months to recover from the emotional pain of losing a child and she still thinks about Daisy daily.

Unfortunately, like Drorbaugh, thousands of women every day endure a pregnancy loss. Miscarriages occur in about 15 to 20 percent of pregnancies, according to The American College of Obstetricians and Genecology. Many healthcare providers, such as certified nurse-midwife, Jennifer Wright-Bennion say the actual percentage of miscarriages may be greater than this.

"Many times they don't even know they're pregnant," Wright-Bennion said.

A miscarriage is a pregnancy that ends on its own within the first 20 weeks of gestation. The cause of most miscarriages is unknown. The most common cause that can be identified is a chromosomal abnormality because of a faulty egg or sperm cell.

Diane Koller was only a few weeks pregnant when she went to the doctor. The doctor told her she had already miscarried. She and her husband were sad, but they started trying to get pregnant again. Koller hadn't known she was pregnant for very long, so the loss wasn't as hard as it could have been.

"If it was later on [in the pregnancy], I would have been so devastated," Koller said.

Koller got pregnant again and was concerned about another miscarriage.

"I wanted to wait to tell people until Christmas when I'd be three months along, just because we didn't want to have to go through that if we miscarried again," Koller said.

Luckily, she didn't miscarry and she's expecting a baby boy in June.

Recently, miscarriages have been linked to high caffeine use. In the March issue of American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a study concluded that high doses of caffeine use during pregnancy increase the risk of miscarriage. This study is just one step to discovering what causes miscarriages and what can be done to prevent them.

Drorbaugh spent a lot of time grieving in silence. She said she felt her husband had gotten over the loss a lot faster than she had and people around her were insensitive to her emotional pain. People would tell her that it was good that her baby died because there was probably something wrong with it.

"Having someone imply that it's better that your baby died is incredibly painful," Drorbaugh said.

After searching for religious and emotional comforting, she soon decided that she wanted to create a book on miscarriages for Latter-day Saint women. She is currently seeking women who are willing to share their experiences, including what scriptures and talks helped them get through their pain. She called it a sort of "Chicken Soup for the Miscarriage Soul."

Jodi Swiatkowski and her husband Sean had two miscarriages. They were determined to have children, and they now have four - each required a cerclage, a surgical procedure where the cervix is basically sewn shut because it doesn't remain closed on its own throughout the pregnancy as it should.

The miscarriages still affect their lives, even with four children.

"Even now after seven years and four children later we still cry about our twin boys and our second miscarriage," Swiatkowski said on her Web site.

They created a Web site called ourmiscarriage.com where they give couples a place to write about their experiences, find answer to their questions, and know they're not alone.

"We were both really shocked about how many people come on every day and how many people need it," Swiatkowski said.

They started the website six and a half years after their miscarriages. It was something they always wanted to do together to help people and their families through their hard time.

"Everyone grieves and heals so differently; it's such a very personal thing," Swiatkowski said.

Source: http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/68347

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After 5 heart-wrenching miscarriages, Alicia Reale Cooney has her little boy

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Alicia Reale Cooney wondered if she was meant to give birth. It was August 2005, and she had miscarried for the fourth heartbreaking time.

You get married, and you have a child. For everyone but her, it seemed so easy.

"It was so hard to see our friends have baby after baby, and we had none." It may sound selfish, she says, but that's the way she felt. "My babies were dying."

Hope and love kept Alicia and her husband, Chris, from giving up on parenthood. If their story encourages others, they are happy to tell it, because, nearly two years after that fourth pregnancy loss, a journey that included yet another miscarriage and two in vitro fertilization attempts, their dream came true.

Alicia is celebrating her first Mother's Day as a mom.

She got pregnant the first time right after they started trying, a year after they married in 2002. They had just moved into a new house, one with an eat-in kitchen and a family room in University Heights "for the family we thought we were having," says Alicia.

Two months later, at her first obstetrics appointment, her doctor searched for a heartbeat, couldn't find one and referred Alicia for a more comprehensive ultrasound. The next day, still no heartbeat.

Alicia was devastated, but everyone told her it was an "isolated incident."

They tried again, but months passed with no success.

Alicia, 33, went to see Dr. James Liu, a reproductive endocrinologist and chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at University Hospitals' MacDonald Women's Hospital. Alicia wasn't ovulating, and he prescribed Clomid to jump-start her ovaries.

Within several months, Alicia was pregnant again. But at seven weeks, her obstetrician couldn't find a heartbeat.

"You think all your life that you're going to grow up and have a family," she says. "Something like this just throws a wrench in your plan."

After miscarrying twice, she had a hard time going to family functions that involved children and avoided baby showers. She sent her mother to buy a gift for a friend because she couldn't walk into a Baby Gap.

The couple had to distance themselves from the stress. Whenever they went out to dinner, they had a rule. "We said, OK, no fertility talk," Alicia says.

All those years of trying to have a baby didn't hurt their marriage, it strengthened it, she says. "It was a partnership."

Trying everything she could think of Alicia had laparoscopic surgery to make sure there was no endometriosis, a thickening of the uterine lining that might make carrying a baby difficult. She saw an acupuncturist who put needles in her ear, said to be a link to the reproductive system.

"I tried everything I could think of," she says.

Liu stepped up the hormones.

In June 2005, she got pregnant for the third time, only to miscarry about six weeks later. In late August, she had her fourth miscarriage, again at about six weeks.

Liu suggested consulting a miscarriage expert in Chicago. The Cooneys flew there twice, but all testing came back normal.

"It was so frustrating," Alicia says. "You want to be well, but you also want an explanation."

About this time, a sensitive girlfriend didn't know how to tell Alicia that she was pregnant, so she told her in a letter. It was a gesture that Alicia regards as very sweet when others said hurtful things about her miscarriages, such as "it was meant to be."

Her work as a media coordinator at University Hospitals Case Medical Center was a distraction. "But when I went home at night, I'd cry," Alicia says.

She leaned on Chris, asking him if he thought they would ever be parents. "We have to be strong," he told her.

A surrogate pregnancy was out, they'd decided, opting instead for in vitro fertilization, a process that costs about $11,000 in Cleveland. Alicia would undergo a course of high-powered fertility injections. Eggs would be retrieved and fertilized with Chris' sperm.

One of the three embryos doctors inserted into her uterus implanted itself. But again, about six weeks later, Alicia miscarried.

"It felt like the end of the world," she says.

Rest of the story: http://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living-1/1210408462299340.xml&coll=2

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