Dr. Geoff Cly, Board Certified OB/GYN, talks about his upcoming book, Wait, Don’t Take My Uterus. He is the expert on preventing miscarriages and offers valuable tips on women’s health. He shares his story and explains his commitment to helping women understand their options in healthcare for themselves and their unborn babies.
Back in the early part of my career, about 15 or more years ago, I had a patient who was pregnant and everything seemed to be going perfectly. The worst thing happened that could happen to a pregnant woman, and that was that she came into the office with a report of not feeling her baby move. I went in the room to examine her. First, I tried to reassure her and then I pulled out the Doppler fetal heart tone machine to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. There was no heartbeat. The baby had died. It is one of the moments as an OBGYN physician that we dread and never get comfortable with, telling an expectant mother that her baby has died.
As you can imagine, the shock and the trauma were awful. She was devastated. She immediately began crying uncontrollably. I felt like crying as well. I managed to hold it together, but the few times that has happened in my career, I always tear up and feel so badly for the patient.
That was a moment when I said to myself that this did not make sense. How can God or the universe create a situation where amazing, beautiful, incredible things happen that allow a woman to form a baby inside of her body, and feed it, protect it, and allow it to grow, and then all of a sudden that baby dies before it was born. That did not make sense to me. It was not acceptable as just a coincidence or that it just happens. I felt in my heart that there had to be a reason for a stillbirth or a baby passing away in utero. If a million things go right up to that point, then what happened that ended it all? I don’t believe in my heart that God, or the universe, or whatever you call the higher power in the world, would create a process that just sometimes it goes so wrong all of a sudden.
That led me on a quest of trying to discover the unseen, unknown conditions or problems occurring in a woman who’s pregnant that we could correct if we knew about them. And if we can find out about something going awry early, can we, and especially myself as a doctor, make a difference for that woman and protect her baby and save that baby’s life so that it will survive until it’s born? How could I help women avoid this type of tragedy?
At the time this happened, I didn’t know much about preventing recurrent miscarriages. There was not much known in the literature I had read and it was not taught in med schools. It was just something that we were told can happen, and if it happens, it’s a coincidence and it’s just a luck of the draw. I could not accept that.
In my quest for learning, I found that there were other people who had the same thoughts I did. There has been research, and there are things that are known that can help prevent a recurrent miscarriage or a stillbirth from happening.
Word got out that I try to help women prevent miscarriages, and stillbirths, and protect their unborn babies until they are born. And so, over the last 15 years or so, most of my pregnant patients are women who have been told they will never be able to carry a baby to term. They’ve been told they should just adopt. They’ve been told to give up the dream of having a child of their own. The amazing thing is that when I apply the things I’ve been taught in the form of medicines, vitamins, and different lab tests, we can find out what is going on with that woman and prevent another miscarriage or stillbirth 90% of the time. The success is amazing. The joy from a woman who’s given up hope of being pregnant and then delivering a beautiful baby is amazing. It’s something that I’ve dedicated a considerable amount of my professional time to and still do, because it is something that works. It’s something that’s needed, and it’s something beautiful.
Now I am getting this information out to the world with my website, HonestOBGyn.com. I want to educate women with the doctor’s knowledge that I have, so that they can go to their doctor and say, “Here’s the information I got from Dr. Cly. Here’s the treatments that he recommends.” I provide the information on the lab tests that they can have done on their own or ask their doctor to do to diagnose and find the problem. A big part of the HonestOBGyn.com’s mission is to get that information out to help women prevent miscarriages and prevent stillbirths, and to avoid that pain, the suffering, and the tragedy so they can have beautiful babies and beautiful families.
The other amazing thing is that it works. Fortunately, there is now research going on worldwide. All over the world, doctors are doing this research, so the knowledge is rapidly advancing. But for some reason in America, many, many doctors just don’t like to talk about it. I think they’re uncomfortable with the death and the grief of it, and so they turn a blind eye on it. The result is miscarriages that could have been prevented. I’m trying to help make a difference for women, and the more I get this information out, the more it will make a difference.