What is a miscarriage?
Miscarriage - a pregnancy that ends spontaneously before the 20th week of pregnancy, when the fetus is unable to live independently outside the uterus. After 20 weeks, pregnancy is stillbirth. A fetus that survives in the third trimester (weeks from 28 to 40 years of gestation) has a chance to survive.
The medical term for miscarriage is spontaneous abortion, abbreviated as SAB. The medical term for repeated miscarriages is habitual abortion. Your healthcare providers should use this terminology to properly diagnose, treat, bill, and comply with legal regulations. They do not intend to be offensive using the term abortion regarding your loss.
What does not cause miscarriage?
You will not lose a pregnancy by working outside your home if it is not in a dangerous environment. Hazardous working conditions include:
- Farms that use insecticides and herbicides that are known to interfere with reproduction
- Hospitals, especially sterilizers, where the worker is exposed to ethylene oxide gas from 0.1 to 250 parts per million, laboratories, nuclear medicine, radiology and disposal of incinerators
- Food plants with waste incineration plants, which produce CCK
- Workplaces near a radiation source that provides more than 100 mSv during pregnancy
- You will not lose pregnancy from moderate physical exertion.
- You will not lose the fetus by carrying sexual intercourse during pregnancy.
- A cold or yeast infection (candidiasis) will not make you lose a child.
If you have a preexisting condition, such as a thyroid disease or diabetes, and you take medications as prescribed, you have good chances of bringing your pregnancy to term.
When a miscarriage is not a miscarriage?
You may not have a miscarriage, even if the signs speak about you.
A bright egg means a gestational bag formed, but there is no baby in it. Your body may slowly become aware of the absence, because you have all the symptoms of pregnancy, such as nausea and tender breasts. A testicular tumor can only be detected during ultrasound.
A complete molar pregnancy means that the sperm fertilizes an empty egg and does not form an embryo. Partial molar pregnancy means that two sperm fertilized the same egg, and only a little placenta and embryo were formed.
In these cases, you have not lost the child, but only the products of the concept.
Why does miscarriage occur?
Pregnancy is most vulnerable during weeks 7-13. Repeated miscarriages may occur due to problems with:
- implantation;
- genetics;
- immune disorders;
- physiology;
- hormones;
- toxins;
- Life style;
- injuries;
- age of mothers and
- infections
Fetus is abnormal in 70% of miscarriages.
Problems with implantation mean that the couple is conceiving, but the fertilized egg cannot safely implant into the uterus for a full pregnancy.
Miscarriage that occurs in the first trimester of pregnancy (day 1 to day 12) is most likely caused by a genetic disorder with the fetus. For example, Turners syndrome is a genetic disease that ends up with 98% of affected pregnancies in the first trimester.
Late miscarriage in the second trimester (4 to 6 months) can occur due to problems with the immune system or physiological problems. Examples of problems of the immune system are:
- Rh incompatibility, where the mother is Rh-negative, and the father and the fetus is Rh-positive. Maternal antibodies attack the fetus as a foreign invader.
- Antiphospholipid antibodies that cause clots in the placenta. These antibodies cause from 10% to 15% of repeated miscarriages, and the fetus often grows in the second trimester.
- Magic lupus, where women with excessive immune systems attack her body. ANA antibodies are present in the bloodstream.
- Defective embryonic blocking antibodies that cannot protect a child from the mother’s immune system when the parents' DNA is too similar. Multiple miscarriages are likely to occur at exactly the same time with each pregnancy, usually before the 12th week.
Examples of physiological (mechanical) problems are:
- Uterine uterine tumors - although they are benign (non-cancerous), fibroids can displace pregnancy. Axillary fibroids act as an IUD contraceptive to prevent the implantation of an egg into the uterus.
- Ectopic (tubal) pregnancy - in 2% of pregnancies, an egg is not implanted in the uterus, but remains in the fallopian tube, which breaks when the embryo outgrows it.
- Incompetent cervix. In 1 of every 100 pregnancies, the mother has a weak cervix due to a previous severe change or miscarriage, surgery on the cervix, termination of D-3, birth defect, or DES (diethylstilbestrol). The cervix is weak and opens before the fetus can survive outside the mothers body, usually in the second trimester (weeks 13 to 27 of pregnancy) or in the third trimester (weeks 28 before delivery). A quarter of babies lost in the second trimester, due to incompetent cervix.
- The transformation of the placenta - the placenta grows through the cervical opening and will break in the second trimester.
Progesterone deficiency is a hormonal problem when pregnancy cannot continue beyond the tenth week without progesterone supplements (natural progesterone cream is available online from http://www.hormonesolutions.com.au.
The elimination of toxins can cause miscarriage. If you live or work near the flue gases of a waste incineration plant, you are exposed to chlorinated hydrocarbons (CHC), which cause endometriosis, habitual abortions, and birth defects. CHC is stored in body fat. Hospital and food industry workers are likely to be exposed. Women who receive radiation of more than 100 mSv can be discarded, and exposure of more than 10 mSv makes a child prone to cancer. Farm workers with chronic occupational exposure to herbicides and insecticides have difficulty reproducing due to the low sperm count and have a double chance of having a child who has no limb than the rest of the population. If you are having reproductive difficulties, find out if your farm uses these agricultural herbicides and insecticides: Aldicarb; arsenic mixed with copper and lead; carbofuran; dinitrocresols; dinitrocresols; dinoterb; drazoxolon; endosulfan; endotal; fentin; mercury chloride; mercury methyls, nitrobenzenes, oxydeton-methyl and thiophanox.
A healthy lifestyle is crucial for maintaining pregnancy. In women suffering from malnutrition or diet, pregnancy is difficult to maintain. Smokers, drug users, women who drink more than two alcoholic drinks per day, and drink heavy coffee drinks (more than 200 milligrams of caffeine per day) often miscarry.
Trauma rarely causes miscarriage, because the child is well relaxed and isolated by amniotic fluid and the mother's body. Only between 1,300 and 13,000 fetal deaths in the United States per year lead to maternal injury when confronted with motor vehicles. When the injury is sufficient, it can lead to premature membrane rupture (PROM) or an abrupt placenta, where the placenta separates from the uterine wall and causes heavy bleeding.
The extremes of age affect the yield of pregnant women. Girls under 15 have a triple risk of neonatal death. Girls over 15 have a 20% chance of miscarriage, which allows them to receive adequate prenatal care. The teenager is still growing, so calcium is distracted by her pregnancy, softens her bones (osteoporosis). Women who delay pregnancy before the age of 30, most often have problems with conception and postponement of pregnancy for the full term. If you are under 35, you have a 15% chance of miscarriage. If you are between 35 and 45 years old, you have a 20–35% chance of miscarriage. If you are 45, you have a 50% chance of miscarriage. Women 46 years and older have a 74.7% chance of miscarriage. Although you and your husband can be healthy, eggs (s) and sperm deteriorate with age.
Infections, such as malaria, syphilis, toxoplasmosis, mycoplasma, fifth disease and chicken pox, can cause miscarriage.
