If you’re considering immune therapy for miscarriage you may be interested to hear the story of Katie Grynberg, a patient of The Fertility & Gynaecology Academy.

Katie has a son but suffered from secondary infertility when trying for another baby. After after 9 miscarriages and a stillbirth, she has finally welcomed into the world her daughter, with the help of controversial fertility treatment, immune therapy.

2011

My fertility journey first started back in 2011 when I first fell pregnant. Unfortunately, eight weeks into the pregnancy I suffered miscarriage and lost the baby. We continued trying and about five months later, I fell pregnant with my son, Leo. We were very fortunate in that – with the exception of a tiny bit of bleeding – he was a textbook pregnancy.

2012

Leo was born.

2013

When we were ready to start trying for a second baby, it didn’t occur that we may find it difficult. Little did we know, I would be one of the 3-5 in 100 women that experience recurrent miscarriage. It would be a full five years, 9 miscarriages and a stillbirth before we’d have a successful pregnancy.

When Leo was one year old we started trying for our second child. History repeated itself and I had another miscarriage. After that, I got pregnant again and carried to 28 weeks, but unfortunately had a stillbirth. My gynaecologist attributed it to bad luck and put me on aspirin – which is given to women with recurrent pregnancy loss – and Clomid. He wanted me to try for a baby three more times to see if it would take, but I wasn’t able to sustain a pregnancy for more than two months and kept on miscarrying.

2014

It was at this point I was referred to Professor Lesley Regan, who carried out a series of tests – the results came back and didn’t show any anomalies. I became pregnant and was prescribed a low-dose of aspirin. I returned for a scan at five weeks but there was nothing to see – I had miscarried. The Professor thought the problem may be due to my husband’s weight, and so he underwent sperm DNA fragmentation but the results showed no issues. Following this, I got pregnant again but miscarried straight away. At this point, I started to feel like it was my body that was killing the foetus. I needed to try a different approach. By this point I was just over 38 years of age.

I went to ARGC and after undergoing their initial tests, they expressed concerns about my Natural Killer (NK) cells. But, because I was managing to fall pregnant, they were keen for me to continue trying for a year and see if anything happened. Unfortunately, nothing did. I returned to the clinic fully intending to go ahead with IVF, but about 30 minutes after buying the drugs, something in me realised that their approach wasn’t for me. I returned to the clinic and handed the drugs straight back in.

I looked into other clinics and found myself at The Lister where I underwent a round of IVF. I was given intralipids on the day of the egg collection and produced 2 embryos: One only lasted to day three; the second embryo was of good quality and was implanted into my uterus on day five. I had another round of intralipids at seven weeks but the scan showed that the sac was very enlarged and the baby hadn’t grown much. At 10 weeks, I visited my gynaecologist – to find that I had miscarried yet again. I returned for a consultation to discuss the next steps and was told they would repeat the process. At this point, I’d been trying for quite a while and didn’t want to keep doing the same thing again and again. I didn’t know what to do and felt frustrated.

2017

Then, one day I was speaking to Leo’s friend’s mum. She mentioned that she’d had a successful pregnancy through Dr Gorgy at The Fertility & Gynaecology Academy. I made an appointment for a consultation but my husband wasn’t available so I took my mum along with me. At this point, I’d just turned 40. When we arrived, my mum immediately asked Dr Gorgy if we were wasting our time. He explained that once he’d found the missing piece of the puzzle, he was confident that they’d be able to help me sustain a pregnancy.

I underwent a variety of different blood tests which revealed that I was missing some antibodies. Dr Gorgy recommended Lymphocyte Immunization Therapy (LIT), a type of immune therapy which is considered controversial. LIT involved white blood cells from my husband being injected into me so that my body became used to the foreign cells. Following this I had a round of IVF. I produced two embryos and both were implanted back into my uterus after three days. Unfortunately the pregnancy only lasted for five weeks before I miscarried.

I was starting to give up and had done IUI in the past but hadn’t worked. I decided to go ahead with another round of IUI with Dr Gorgy at the clinic and my body took really well to the drugs that he used. A few days after the IUI I went to Wonderland at Hyde Park with my friend and my son, which, in hindsight hadn’t been the best thing to do – we ended up walking more than 10 kilometres with heavy rucksacks. Unfortunately, the IUI failed as well.

2019

Mentally, I was almost ready to give up. I felt like nothing was working and made the decision to see a counsellor – recommended by the clinic. I had two sessions with the counsellor, we put our house on the market after deciding it was time to relocate, booked a holiday to Orlando in the US, and suddenly, one day in the middle of January I fell pregnant.

I sent my husband out to buy a pregnancy test and it showed a really strong blue cross. Every time I’d done a test in the past the blue cross had been very weakly coloured. I couldn’t believe it! That morning I ran to the clinic with my pregnancy test in my bag. Dr Gorgy and the team were really fast to react and put a plan of action into place. I had blood tests and intralipids that very same day. Later that evening I had a call from the clinic to let me know that I was four weeks and two days pregnant. My hormone levels were already quite high and my progesterone was a bit low and so right away they put me on immune supportive therapy. Dr Gorgy wanted me to come back within 2-4 days to check my hormone levels and it’s a good job I did as in that short time, my B-hCG level had tripled! This can be a sign that there is something abnormal with the pregnancy. Because of this, I was given intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg). Between weeks five and seven I was given Neupogen injections to take every four days to help manage the antibody levels.

At 7 weeks I experienced some bleeding, which was unlike any I’d had when I’d miscarried. I visited the clinic the next morning for a scan and there was my daughter, growing at a normal weight. The scan showed some bleeding on the placenta but Dr Gorgy reassured me that this was quite normal that this stage. I had another IVIg drip and took it easy for a few days.

Throughout my pregnancy Dr Gorgy and the team oversaw my bloods and kept a close eye on my NK cells. I had LIT again at 8 weeks, 12 weeks and 16 weeks and intralipids every 6 weeks if I needed it.

At 17.5 weeks I fell over on my back and even though I had been discharged, I called up the clinic and they were super quick to fit me in for an appointment to check that everything was ok.

At 37 weeks I gave birth to my daughter, Scarlett, who was 6lbs 5oz. I really cannot thank Dr Gorgy and his team enough. I felt like The Fertility & Gynaecology Academy really tailored the treatment for me, whereas at other places it felt like I’d just got an off-the-shelf treatment. When I needed an appointment they would always fit me in, without fail. When I needed to speak to someone, they were always there, and were warm and welcoming. I really felt like the entire team genuinely cared about me and my pregnancy. I truly believe that without them, I wouldn’t have been blessed with my daughter.

I think it’s important that more people open up about their experience with immune therapy, despite it being perceived as controversial. I hate to think about how many other women are going through the same thing, not knowing where to turn next. I hope that my story encourages other women in the same position to explore immune therapy.