Your Over-35 Week-by-Week Pregnancy Guide (ePub)

M. Kelly Shanahan, M.D.:

When I was a small child, I wanted to be a jockey, but I soon grew too tall. Then, when I was 11, a fall from a trampoline changed by life: I ruptured my spleen and had major surgery. From that time, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a doctor.

My course never faltered. I graduated from high school, attended Bryn Mawr College, majoring in biology, and was accepted at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. When doing my obstetrics rotation and delivering a baby to a woman having her fourth child, I found my specialty. I did my ob/gyn residency at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. It was trial by fire. The program at the time was in a state of transition and we were short-handed and under supervised, but I learned how to think on my feet. I came out of that program well equipped to handle any emergency.

After almost three years in practice, I decided to look West for a more balanced life. I found a job at Lake Tahoe, with another woman. Shortly after I moved here, I met a wonderful man, and we were married. He always knew he wanted children, and convinced me that starting a family would be a good idea. I agreed, and being the successful physician who had always accomplished everything I set out to do figured getting pregnant would be easy.

I was wrong. I was not ovulating. I embarked on the rocky pathway of infertility, treating myself for almost a year. I got pregnant on Clomid, but miscarried. I miscarried again in 1997. That loss was devastating. I felt like I was a double failure—both as a woman and as an ob/gyn. I joined an e-mail support group and told my story on the Women's Health Forum at obgyn.net, a site for which I acted as an advisor and expert. It took me six months to get the courage to try again.

I conceived, and thanks to treatments for the antiphospholipid syndrome that was the cause of my miscarriages, this third time was a charm: after Pergonal, progesterone, aspirin and twice

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