More reassuring news came out of the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology a couple of weeks ago in Stockholm: Researchers there presented the results of a long-term trial that found that among women who’d had at least three miscarriages, approximately two-thirds went on to deliver at least one baby – if they’d sought help from a specialist.
The study looked at records of nearly 1,000 Danish women ranging in age from 20 to 46 who’d sought help for recurrent miscarriage at a clinic between 1986 and 2008. “We found that, of all the women included in the study, 66.7% had achieved a subsequent live birth within five years after their first consultation in our clinic, and that this increased to 71.1% within 15 years after the first consultation,” study leader Professor Ole Christiansen told a press conference in Stockholm. The study didn’t look, though, at how useful different treatments the clinic provided were in helping women conceive, carry a pregnancy, and deliver.
These findings could be useful in helping women and couples more accurately determine how long it might take them to become pregnant and carry a healthy pregnancy to term. Losing multiple pregnancies is, of course, devastating, taking a huge emotional toll on a woman and on a couple, so the researchers hope this information will enable couples and their medical advisors to better navigate what can be a long road to parenthood.
Have you experienced miscarriage? Were your doctors able to pinpoint any cause? How did you cope?
