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My body produced a surge in progesterone to save my baby

by Marianne Powter
(Ontario, Canada)

I am 14 weeks pregnant and have had 4 scares now, the current one being the fourth and hopefully the last, of miscarriage. The cause of each of these near losses was due completely to stress as I am involved in a serious 4-party custody litigation.

Each time a stressful thought or occurence took place, the first steps towards miscarriage began: cramping, followed by pink discharge turning to red blood. Each of the three times previously, I took off work, stayed home, avoided all thoughts of the litigation and used warm baths and massage on my belly to stop cramps. In each case the cramps did stop. With the rest I took, I found that my body surged in progesterone production as an automatic response which stopped cramps. I can detect the surge as it is directly related to serotonin increase and I could feel a very distinct change in mood towards contentment and happy positive feelings. Once cramping stopped, however, the bleeding took a solid 8 days to gradually stop.

I am unsure whether the spotting was the damage done just purging itself or if the cramping had caused a wound of some sort to the uterus lining so rich in blood vessels and the wound took time to heal.


The current scare was triggered by nasty games from my ex-husband who is alienating my two sons from me (now 7 months of parental alienation) and has managed to prevent me from seeing them over Christmas. Going to meet my lawyer this morning, I discovered pink discharge which turned to red following cramps throughout last night. I cancelled my appointment, had bath, warm beads on uterus and slept for 4 hours this afternoon awakening to no cramps and a surge in progesterone accompanied by nausea perhaps caused by hormone surge. I realize there is still light red bleeding, but no cramps and I will go for an ultrasound to ensure a heartbeat and live baby.

My conclusion is that stress DOES cause cortisol production which in turn attacks the fetus. My body has modeled that it defended and saved the baby by producing progesterone and cramps stopped by my own self taking charge to take away external stresses. If the cramps do not return and the bleeding does finally disappear and stop, I will have made it through 4 possible miscarriages caused by stress and cortisol, in each case the baby saved by a surge in progesterone with rest.

Hence, my body seems to know that producing progesterone in the wake of danger of cortisol production is the answer to saving the baby.

I hope that my experiences which I have shared can be reviewed by researchers of progesterone and its link to preventing miscarriage. My body has shown not only the proof of this link but that a healthy female body has the ability to defend the fetus it carries by internal knowledge to produce a surge in progesterone.

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Dec 31, 2010
 My body produced a surge in progesterone to save my baby
by: Wray

Hi Marianne Thanks so much for sharing in such detail how you prevented a miscarriage. It is possible to do, but not many will go to the lengths you did. Stress does cause miscarriages, there's no doubt about it. Most people don't have the knowledge you do about stress and what it does to us. So in these cases using supplemental progesterone does help many women. We do have a page on progesterone and Pregnancy. You might be interested to read the studies on the page. I hope your problems resolve soon, and that your pregnancy continues happily. I also hope many women will read this page of yours. Take care Wray

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