Our Baby News

The correct word for a miscarriage – the loss of a pregnancy before the baby is able to survive on his own, that is before the twenty-eighth week of the pregnancy – is abortion. Unfortunately this word has over recent years come to be used by many people to mean primarily deliberate termination of a pregnancy, and a woman who greatly wants her baby and has a miscarriage may be very upset if she hears hospital staff use the word abortion to describe her condition. But she shouldn’t be -no-one is suggesting she deliberately ended her pregnancy just because they use this word.

What are the causes of spontaneous abortion or miscarriage? There are many, some understood, some not. It is certainly a very common happening – it has been estimated that about one in every five pregnancies ends in miscarriage and that the commonest time is during the first three months. One cause of miscarriage at around the tenth to twelfth week is the ‘blighted ovum’. Instead of developing normally, the cells fail to start the proper growth into a baby, and the body recognizes this because of differences in the hormone responses, and discards the pregnancy.

This, many people feel, is something to be grateful for rather than to mourn. Better surely to lose a pregnancy than to suffer the birth of a severely handicapped child. There is no suggestion that there is anything wrong with either parent if this happens; the growth needed to make a baby from two tiny cells is so incredible that the remarkable thing is that so many develop normally rather than that a few don’t.

IS A MISSED PERIOD ALWAYS THE FIRST SIGN OF A PREGNANCY?

Usually it is – however, not every missed period necessarily means a pregnancy. There can be a great many causes for a missed period, many of them emotional.

Girls studying hard for exams may miss periods; so may girls leaving home and starting a new job, or traveling abroad, or falling in love or out of it, or suffering bereavement.

The close link between emotions and hormones is the cause of this sort of reaction. Also, physical illnesses may lead to missed periods, including anemia, thyroid disorders and diabetes (both these latter are hormonal) or experiencing surgery or an accident.

However, in a woman of reproductive age living a full sex life without the use of contraception, a missed period should be regarded as very indicative of pregnancy.

One problem which may bewilder is the ‘half missed’ period. Some women, early in pregnancy, experience at the usual period time a small blood loss which is much less than the normal period but which she naturally regards as a period.

Sometimes – depending on the cause. If there is a ‘blighted ovum’, then the loss is inevitable.

 If the developing baby has died – as occasionally happens – then again the loss is inevitable. But often the problem is simply that the pregnancy is a little fragile and needs time to settle down and become more stable.

So, when there is any sign of threatened abortion -notably bleeding – bed-rest is advised.

Just being still and quiet can enable the hormone control to establish itself as it should. If there is rhythmic pain as well as bleeding then the likelihood is that the miscarriage is inevitable.

Sometimes doctors may use hormones in careful doses to protect a fragile pregnancy, but they are used carefully, because it was found in the past that over-enthusiastic use of some hormones led to damage to the baby.

Modern methods of dosage estimation are very precise so no mother need fear hormones if she is advised to take them.

This is one of the most vexed of questions since it tends to be clouded by individual views of ‘morality’ rather than by sensible consideration of medical facts.

The facts are that in most cases regular sexual intercourse is harmless, and indeed healthy. A loving couple would feel sadly deprived if it were forbidden for three-quarters of a year.

However, there are a few exceptions to this; women who have a fragile pregnancy, in which there is a threat of miscarriage, may need extra rest. Sexual intercourse, since it burns up a great deal of energy and involves contraction of many muscles, is hardly restful.

So for such women abstention at the times of greatest risk is usually advised . For the rest of the time there need be no problems.