Miscarriage: Keep breaking the silence

Miscarriage: Keep breaking the silence - I am encouraged to see public discourse about miscarriage of pain. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was posted in his Facebook page with pregnancy loss, he and his companion suffered. 

Beyonce and Jay-Z wrote a song about her first miscarriage. Nicole Kidman, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Courteney Cox and Brooke Shields have all publicly shared their experiences of miscarriage. But too often, I always find women and their partners who suffer in silence and alone.
 
Recently, researchers from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York polled more than 1,000 adults in the United States to determine what the public knows the causes of miscarriage and emotional effects. Their findings were published earlier this year in an article entitled "A national survey on public perception of miscarriage."

Fifteen percent of respondents said they (or a partner) had suffered a miscarriage. More than half of respondents believe that errors are rare, even though studies show that nearly one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. Over three quarters of respondents believe a miscarriage as a result of stress, and more than a quarter also believes that the main causes were made lifestyle during pregnancy.  

But in fact, most miscarriages are the result of chromosomal abnormalities in the developing fetus, structural abnormalities of the uterus, or endocrine or autoimmune disorders in the mother.

For me, the most striking part of the survey was that many of those who had suffered a miscarriage said they felt they had done something wrong, and he was lonely and embarrassed. However, when his friends know their own involuntary abortions themselves, they feel less alone. They also felt less isolated when celebrities reveal their miscarriages.

So it's great that so many public figures spoke about their own recent involuntary abortions, the study results show that we have yet to achieve the discussion of miscarriage closet. This is the advice I always give my patients who have suffered a miscarriage:

       *  Nothing that has caused the error, and nothing you could have done would have prevented.
       *  Even if it had been completely still in bed, they were totally relaxed and ate only healthy food, although she had a miscarriage.

       *  You will be surprised how many of your close friends and family members have experienced a miscarriage. Share this experience with them. 
By: Hope Ricciotti, MD