A miscarriage, also called a pregnancy loss, is when your pregnancy stops growing before it has reached 20 weeks. An early miscarriage or early pregnancy loss is when the pregnancy stops growing before it has reached 13 weeks.

About half of all miscarriages are due to chromosomal issues intrinsic to the embryo and the other half are due to environmental issues within the mother. Sometimes these environmental issues can be hard to uncover. We at the Freyja Clinic specialize in uncovering these issues, especially if you have had more than one miscarriage and no obvious reason has been found.

You may be able to have the miscarriage tissue tested for abnormal chromosomes. You can also ask your doctor for tests you can do to see if they can figure out if you have some environmental issues that caused it. Unfortunately, in many cases all the testing comes back without showing a cause and you will be told that it was an “unexplained miscarriage”. This is especially common if you have had two or more miscarriages and therefore have something called “recurrent pregnancy loss”. At the Freyja Clinic we realize that there is almost always a reason for why it happened and we are usually able to uncover the reason behind it so that it can be treated.

About one in four pregnant women with have spotting in the beginning of their pregnancy and only one in ten of these women will actually end up having a miscarriage. Cramping, or loss of pregnancy symptoms are often not good predictors of having an eventual miscarriage.
The only way to know for sure is to have an ultrasound where you doctor can evaluate the embryo and see if it is happening or not.

When you are about 9 weeks, pregnant, the risk goes down from about 20% to about 1%.

Very early miscarriages, happening before you are able to see anything on an ultrasound are quite common and may be occurring in up to 50% of all pregnancies. After you have seen a pregnancy in the uterus with an ultrasound, the risk goes down to 20%.

Yes, the older you are the higher chance there is for you to have a miscarriage.
Up to the age of 35, there is about a 10% chance of having a miscarriage after 6 weeks gestation while after the age of 40, this rate goes up to 30%.

In most cases, stress will not increase much your risk of having a miscarriage. Very severe and long-lasting stress may have an impact but it is not a significant one.