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“Don’t worry, pregnancy isn’t an illness,” said my midwife, smiling affectionately as I worried about my lack of morning sickness. She must have been well acquainted with the limbo of early pregnancy, the constant fluttering between hope and fear.
Two days later, doubled over on the toilet and clutching a hot water bottle as I watched dark clots of blood drip into the pan, it felt very much like an illness. I knew something was desperately wrong.
The list of things I don’t understand about my miscarriage seems never-ending. I don’t know how old the embryo was when it stopped living. I don’t know why it stopped living. I will never know.
Part of this distress comes from that unanswered “Why?” Most women having their first or second miscarriage are told to put it down to one-off, unspecified genetic abnormalities in the fetus. It just wasn’t meant to be. Yes, society likes fate. But women feel better if they get more accurate information, says Ruth Bender-Atik, the national director of the Miscarriage Association.
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Most women never get an answer, however, even if they are tested for possible explanations, because the science is sorely lacking.
There are several other potential causes: abnormalities in the womb or cervix, genetic faults inherited from the parents, hormone imbalances, polycystic ovary syndrome, various infections and so on. In the U.K., tests for these possibilities are offered only after three consecutive miscarriages, whereas in many other countries the threshold is two.
Read full, original post: The Miscarriage Taboo
