For women who’ve experienced the crushing blow of a miscarriage, one of the small comforts is the conventional wisdom that a single pregnancy loss doesn’t bode ill for future pregnancies.
A University of Aberdeen (Scotland) study of more than 32,000 expectant mothers showed an increased risk of many pregnancy complications among women who has suffered even one miscarriage.
They were 3.3 times more likely to have preeclampsia, twice as likely to have an induced labor, and almost six times more likely to need intervention like the use of forceps at birth.
Continuing the litany of suckage, they were 1.7 times more likely to show symptoms of a miscarriage but not actually lose the pregnancy, 1.3 more times likely to have bleeding after 24 weeks in the next pregnancy, and also had increased risk of a premature baby and of having a child with a low birth weight.
It should be noted that the risk of all of these things overall is pretty low, so an increased risk at that level is a concern but doesn’t mean your pregnancy is doomed to difficulty if you’re among the 20 percent of women who have suffered a miscarriage.
What’s interesting about this is that most research has focused on recurrent preganancy loss, defined as three or more miscarriages in a row. Most doctors won’t even begin to look at underlying causes for miscarriage until that’s happened. That’s an awful lot of heartbreak to go through before getting some answers, so hopefully this study will lead to women getting additional support in their pregnancies sooner rather than later.
