Why have i miscarried 3 times

There is no single treatment that can prevent every kind of miscarriage, just as there is no single cause of miscarriage. But some treatments have been shown to improve the chances of a healthy pregnancy in particular cases. And there are also some general guidelines about reducing the risk of miscarriage. Some miscarriages are caused by chance e. Fortunately, they are not very likely to happen again.

Some causes of miscarriage cannot be treated because as there is no way of changing the basic problem e. But in many cases, couples have no idea why they have miscarried, so there is no treatment to recommend. Some women may have a blood-clotting disorder; for others, a contributing factor could be thyroid dysfunction.

Yet studies of possible preventative treatments tend to recruit their subjects as if all recurrent miscarriages have the same cause. A related problem lies in the mistaken assumption that most if not all miscarriages happen because the pregnancy was doomed to fail. In half of all miscarriages, the embryo will have a serious chromosomal abnormality that means it could never survive, but the other half are believed to be healthy embryos.

The key question, she believes, is establishing whether someone is repeatedly losing chromosomally normal or abnormal pregnancies. Yet access to genetic testing is patchy.

Not all NHS hospitals can do this kind of testing on site. If someone miscarries at home, the onus is on them to collect a clean sample of the tissue and take it to their hospital within 24 hours. This may not be something they can do — or even know about. Quenby is a celebrity in the world of recurrent miscarriage patients. Her particular area of interest is how the lining of the womb behaves in early pregnancy — and how it might contribute to miscarriage.

She is one of the authors of a study published in January , which found that a repurposed diabetes drug, sitagliptin, could reduce the risk of miscarriage by boosting the number of stem cells in the womb lining. These cells are responsible for renewing the lining and reducing inflammation.

Even with the help of the most motivated of doctors, there is going to be a degree of trial and error. Many people will be told, as we were, that the best treatment is no treatment — simply try again. This is what we did, only to miscarry for a fourth time.

We were under the supervision of the recurrent-miscarriage clinic, yet even after that fourth loss, the prescription remained the same: just keep trying. It took us a year before we felt ready to roll the dice again. Shortly after I started researching this piece, in November, I found out I was pregnant for the fifth time. T o be pregnant again after previous miscarriages is to live at the fork of two alternative lives.

Alive or dead? Baby or miscarriage? In every possible scenario, you plan for the two outcomes. To a certain extent, you are forced to buy into both possibilities simultaneously.

You cannot truly believe it will work out, but you have to proceed as though you are pregnant anyway, until a scan proves otherwise. Alive and dead.

You treat yourself as your own walking research study: a sample of one. Perhaps you take a different brand of prenatal vitamin. Or you do different exercise. You do no exercise at all. You drink less caffeine. You drink no caffeine at all.

You are more careful. Mostly, though, you just wait. Pregnancy research, in general, is underfunded. When you train as a gynaecologist, you can specialise in sub-fields such as infertility and IVF, but there is no specific speciality in miscarriage, he explained. There are also practical difficulties to conducting studies.

Even when human trials of treatments are feasible, there is the challenge of persuading women who are desperate to avoid another miscarriage to sign up to a study in which they might be given the placebo. Now that I was pregnant again, there was one treatment I was desperate to try.

Progesterone has long been the great hope of miscarriage research. In May , a large, multi-centre trial of progesterone, given in early pregnancy — the Prism trial — found that for women with a history of recurrent miscarriage who had started bleeding during their next pregnancy, taking progesterone made a significant difference to the live birth rate, compared with a placebo.

I was prepared to argue the toss for progesterone with my doctors this time around. To my surprise, the female doctor we saw at the clinic for our first appointment, in the first month of this pregnancy, agreed to prescribe it without so much as a raised eyebrow.

Blood tests are used to detect the presence of these antibodies. If present, medication that helps thin the blood may be used. Some women experience signs and symptoms before a miscarriage actually occurs; others do not.

Some of the signs that a miscarriage may be about to start are: vaginal spotting, which is usually dark brown and changing to pink or red; a decrease in breast tenderness or fullness; and absence of fetal movement or heart sounds. Cramping and vaginal bleeding are signs that the miscarriage is occurring. Be proactive and call your doctor immediately. Even if ends up to be nothing wrong, a peace of mind will go a long way.

If you do find that you are bleeding, try to keep track of the amount of bleeding that occurs. If you notice any tissue has passed, try to save it. This may sound strange to some, but many doctors will want it for laboratory evaluation to help determine the cause of the miscarriage. They can run a series of tests to see if there is an underlying cause to what may be causing the reoccurring miscarriage.

Here are some of the tests your doctor may recommend:. Miscarriage can leave you and your partner with many intense feelings of loss and grief. These feelings should not be dismissed or devalued. All to often they can be suppressed and misunderstood by friends and family. Allow yourself grace in this difficult time. The grief associated with the loss not only of your baby, but also of your pregnancy is one that should be acknowledged.

It is okay to feel angry and depressed. Talk to your spouse and remember, that men and women sometimes experience grief in different ways. Accept that and try to support each other. Join a support group or a grief counselor. You may find that friends and family will have trouble understanding your loss, know there is much comfort and refuge in others who are experiencing the same heart break.

Be sure to practice self-care and get the support you need to get you through this difficult time. Smoking, heavy drinking, and drug use also increase the chances of miscarriage as well as caffeine intake beyond 1 cup of regular brewed coffee a day. Extreme exercise and dieting can also be factors so we examine lifestyles of both partners initially.

Certain infections may increase miscarriages. Often treatment includes a round of antibiotics. The treatments available to reduce your chance of another miscarriage will vary, depending on diagnosis. Diminished ovarian reserve may respond well to fertility treatments using your own eggs, or you may need to go the route of egg donation, using a semen bank, or adopting an embryo.

These options may not be ideal if, like most couples you desire a genetically related baby, but they are good options and during diagnosis we may determine to cross those bridges when we get there, meaning we will usually try a number of things first. Treatment for autoimmune conditions or blood clotting disorders can lower your chance of another miscarriage by a large amount, but we can never get you down to a zero chance of miscarriage. But blood thinners, given as small shots under the skin in the stomach area that can be administered at home, can improve your chance of success.

Problems in the uterus may need surgery, which perform inhouse in an outpatient procedure. Patients will be home, recuperating in a few hours and sometimes this is all that is needed to carry the next pregnancy to term.

We now perform genetic testing on all IVF embryos as our standard of care. When we know what to look for, we can avoid a number of genetic diseases and remove them from the family bloodline going forward. Adopting an embryo may also be a good option. Yes, please come see a fertility specialist like ORH to receive extra care. We can check your progesterone levels and thyroid function early in pregnancy, with progesterone supplements or thyroid medication given if needed.

If unfortunately, you do have another miscarriage, we can offer genetic testing to see if the pregnancy was genetically abnormal or not — e.

We can tell if the genetic problem came from the egg or the sperm. Our hope is the sooner we see you, the faster we can get you to your healthy pregnancy and delivery. They have more tools at their disposable to accurately diagnose the root cause s behind your miscarriages than a regular OBGYN. Diminished ovarian reserve low egg supply is just as common in women with multiple miscarriages as it is in women who are having trouble getting pregnant infertility , and we perform a specialized ultrasound to look at the number of small follicles in your ovaries antral follicle count or AFC and the size of your ovaries, and blood tests including FSH, Antimullerian Hormone AMH and possibly a Clomid Challenge Test CCT.

ORH has been helping people become parents for over 30 years. We do a thorough diagnostic evaluation on all of our patients and make a specialized treatment plan tailored to your needs.

Our goal is to get our patients pregnant, with a viable healthy baby, in the least invasive way possible.