Miscarriage
Please stop reading and go to the emergency room if you are experiencing any of the following:
Heavy bleeding (soaking more than 1 pad per hour)
Severe pain
Losing consciousness (passing out)
No one wants to have to talk about losing a pregnancy. But the truth is that around 15% of pregnancies end in miscarriage.
Miscarriages are extremely difficult both emotionally and physically. There can be many causes for a miscarriage, and reading about them may feel confusing, frightening, and not specific to you.
Each patient's experience is unique, and at Summit Women's Health we want to support our patients through even the most heartbreaking parts of building a family. Please call us at 681 282 5591, email us, or call your doctor to get answers to your questions.
In the meantime, for more information, feel free to keep reading.
Why does a miscarriage happen?
It is important to know that a miscarriage is very often a random occurrence that could not have been prevented. Activities like work, exercise, or sex and experiences like having a fall, getting frightened, or having a heated argument are not considered causes of miscarriage.
Depending on how far into the pregnancy the miscarriage occurs, there can be many different reasons for it. The most common one is that the fetus was developing with irregular genes.
An egg and sperm each have a set of chromosomes, which should come together to create an embryo with 46 chromosomes. If the embryo has too many or too few chromosomes, it will stop growing and need to leave the body. There are hundreds of other uncontrollable complications like this that can cause a miscarriage. Though painful, it is also a natural part of the human body to have a way to let pregnancies go.
How is a miscarriage treated?
There are different types of miscarriage that can occur, and each of them call for different treatments afterwards. What your body needs is to let the tissue from the fetus go so that it does not cause dangerous bleeding, an infection, or other complications.
In some cases, the release of tissue may occur naturally or with the help of a medicine. In other cases, you may need to undergo a procedure under anesthesia in which your doctor will remove the tissue.
Can I try to get pregnant again?
Almost 90% of people who experience miscarriages go on to have a child. There are some considerations around taking some time for the body to heal before trying again. Your doctor at Summit Women’s Health can talk you through tests we may want to do to make sure that another pregnancy would not be a risk to your health. Otherwise, we have many patients who go on to conceive and birth healthy children.
When a pregnancy is not meant to be carried to term, everyone in Summit Women’s Health, from our office managers to our nurses and doctors, is here for you.