About 6 months ago I had a miscarriage. Then I found out a week ago that I am pregnant again. While I am excited about the pregnancy I am really nervous that I could miscarry again. Is there anything that I can do to prevent that?”
For better or worse, there really isn’t anything you can do to prevent a miscarriage from happening, other than common safety precautions like avoiding alcohol, dangerous chemicals and prolonged exposure to heat. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop a miscarriage once it is underway. Most miscarriages are the result of genetic issues in the young embryo. Growing an entire human from two half-cells is a really complicated process, and the majority of fertilized eggs don’t implant. When a fertilized egg does implant and begin to grow, the cells have to have the genetic information available at the right time or they can’t keep dividing, which makes the embryo stop growing. The DNA can weaken over time, which is why miscarriages become more common as women age. (The DNA in sperm tends to be a lot fresher, but it can also become damaged by things like heat, a man’s nutritional deficiencies or exposure to certain chemicals).
As many one in five detected pregnancies ends in miscarriage. But the good news is that 80 percent of pregnancies succeed within the first 8 weeks, more than 90 percent will end in a healthy baby once the fetal heartbeat is detected, and the overall pregnancy loss rate goes down to less than one percent after the 13th week of pregnancy.
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