Pregnancy After Miscarriage

If your last pregnancy ended in a loss, you may find yourself feeling overwhelmed with anxiety at every single milestone you reach during your current pregnancy. The fact that miscarriages are a common occurrence isn't likely to lessen the impact of what happened before. Nor will having other healthy children at home -- though people might assume that this can help diminish your grief.

If you've experienced an early miscarriage (the most common type), during your next pregnancy you might be worried until you've reached the point at which things went wrong the last time. Or if you lost a baby later in pregnancy or endured multiple miscarriages, you might never feel completely relaxed during this pregnancy.

It's only natural to rein in your excitement about having another baby after you've suffered a loss. You might do this in order to protect yourself, hoping to lessen your grief if you miscarry again. Your normal urge to assert a degree of control over a risky situation frequently fuels another common desire: to do things very differently during this pregnancy. Some typical behaviors include:

• Playing it extra safe: Experiencing profound loss teaches an unwelcome lesson -- life sometimes defeats our most cherished plans. It's natural for you to be concerned throughout your next pregnancy. But talk with your doctor and get the reassurance you need to achieve some peace of mind so you can actually enjoy the pregnancy, without being paralyzed by fear that everything you do could be a threat to the baby.
• Seeking a new medical strategy: If your previous pregnancy experience was very medically oriented, you may seek less intervention with the next pregnancy. Alternately, you might seek more medical intervention.
• Maintaining emotional distance from the baby: If you've miscarried, you might be surprised by how relatively detached you feel from your baby during your next pregnancy. You might not reveal your pregnancy for a long time, or you may try not to personalize the baby for a time. If you've suffered a loss, it's common to want to hold back the next time by choosing to know as little as possible about the baby before the birth.