Bust a Myth about Miscarriage

Posted on April 23 2011 by Alica Blakeley

Bust a Myth about Miscarriage

I caused my second miscarriage because I was so stressed out about this pregnancy. I can’t go see a fertility doctor until I have three miscarriages, and everyone says to wait three months before I try again. There’s nothing I can do because most miscarriages are unexplained, but I know if I have another one, I am not very likely to ever have a successful pregnancy.

Miscarriage refers to the loss of pregnancy that occurs during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Miscarriage is more common than many women may think. Studies reveal that anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of all clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage.

A second miscarriage, however, is not as common. According to Joseph A. Hill, M.D., a reproductive endocrinologist with Fertility Centers of New England, recurrent pregnancy loss is defined as two or more pregnancy losses prior to 20 weeks, and it occurs in approximately 1 percent of pregnancies. “Evaluation after recurrent pregnancy loss should commence after two losses,” he says. “Once a normal period has occurred following a miscarriage, the couple can resume trying to conceive, but they should seek help after two losses to determine potential causality.”

It’s a myth that most miscarriages are unexplained, says Dr. Hill. “This is not true, as the majority of losses are chromosomally abnormal. This may be hard to prove using conventional karyotype analysis, but newer techniques using CGH (comparative genomic hybridization) or FISH (fluorescent in situ hybridization) have found the incidence of chromosomal abnormalities may be as high as 70 percent.”

Most chromosomal abnormalities in early pregnancy losses arise spontaneously because of non-disjunction (the failure of chromosome pairs to separate properly during cell division) or because of other genetic errors in the egg, the sperm or in the early embryo.

To follow are other factors that have been linked to miscarriage.

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