Miscarriages are so painful! (Pt 1)

I received this letter from a reader which raises a number of important issues in pregnancy. I will address some of the points raised in this article and in the next.

Dear Doctor

I am a mother and expecting another baby in a few months. Before 2008, I have been pregnant twice in the span of two years but, unfortunately, I lost both of them early in the pregnancies. I could not understand why God would allow me to experience such a terrible ordeal. I was hurting so much and, to make matters worse, I work every day with mothers and their newborn babies. I remember one day crying from Spanish Town to Half-Way Tree, but, in all of my pain, I knew that God must have allowed me to have this experience so that one day I could help someone going through the same thing.

I visited a private doctor and did several tests including the ones for lupus and low womb, trying to figure out what caused the miscarriages. All the tests were futile. I got pregnant again in 2007 with my third pregnancy. The doctor prescribed aspirin 81mg. He said it would thin the blood and supply the womb with blood and oxygen. He also gave advice such as no heavy lifting, long driving nor sex until I was out of danger.

Today, I feel compelled to share my story because many marriages are affected by not having a child and maybe the doctors or clinics do not believe that a pregnant woman should be taking aspirin. I can only give my personal experience and hope that someone will be blessed by me sharing this experience and triumph over miscarriages.

- Carol

Dear Reader,

You talk about having two early miscarriages, although you did not mention exactly how far along you were in both pregnancies. By strict definition, recurrent miscarriage occurs when a woman has three or more losses.

However, for many reasons, including the distress of the woman, a physician will take a detailed history and often do a number of tests for further evaluation after a woman has lost two pregnancies.

The timing of the loss, meaning how far along a woman was in her pregnancy, will affect the type of evaluation and treatment. Just a brief word of hope to some of these women before I continue, more than two thirds of women with recurrent losses will have a baby even without any treatment.

This percentage increases even further if certain causes, which I will discuss in the second part of this article, are excluded. Nevertheless, given the significant emotional strain which our reader so eloquently describes, treatment may often be given even if the test results are normal.

(To be continued in the September 8 edition of Health. Don't miss it!)

Dr Monique Rainford is a consulting obstetrician and gynaecologist; email: yourhealth@gleanerjm.com.