Ok so me and my partner have been TTC for 2 years. I went to my GP a year ago regarding struggling with getting pregnant and suffering 3 chemical pregnancies. I’m overweight and my GP flat out refused to refer me to any fertility services because of this. I asked about at least doing my bloods and a scan as the basics but they refused until I’ve lost weight. I also asked about referral to a dietitian to help with weight loss which they refused as they said it wasn’t a medical reason. They said usually they’d give me a 12 week pass to weight watchers or the gym but because of covid they were all shut so we can’t do that.

This week I’ve had a completely separate medical issue where they’ve done my bloods. On these results it has shown I have a very low folate level of 1.1 and the normal level should be above 4. Now I’ve been taking ttc vitamins which usually contain around 400 micro grams of folic acid however due to how low mine is I would need the higher strength of 5 milligrams which would be 5000 micro grams.

Now when my GP has looked back at previous bloods I had done in 2019 my folate level was 1.5 so this has been completely untreated and ignored for a good few years.

But here’s the kicker… as well as a host of other medical problems, one of the big things low folate can cause is temporary infertility- which can be reversed by having a normal folate level. Also as I’m sure everyone knows when ttc- even if I had managed to fall pregnant low folate can cause huge birth defects.

I feel so angry and let down as all this could have been avoided by taking 1 tablet a day. Once again a medical professional has purely seen that I am overweight and put all my problems down to that rather than investigating to see if there was anything else causing problems.